Originally Posted by
quilting in my60s
Am I not understanding problem? Why not use color catchers. I buy my at Big Lots for a good price. I had a friend wash some white that had red bleed on it and she used color catcher (by Shout) and wash several times and red finally came out.
This will not work for a bleeder fabric when the bleeding is caused by a fault in manufacturing which causes none of the dye to be permanently set. In this case, the bleeding will continue indefinitely. If this fabric is used in a quilt which is subsequently gifted to someone who does not use color catchers, they will think they have done something wrong when the bleeding dye tints the quilt.
On a different note, washing a quilt multiple times to remove unwanted dye bleeds is hard on a quilt. It is better to prevent the problem in the first place.
Edit: It's also important to note that color catchers are effective only with light bleeds. It's rare to encounter a heavy bleeder fabric these days, but it does happen. When you have a fabric that bleeds a *lot*, color catchers will not be enough to catch all of the dye bleed and the excess will settle into other fabrics.