Ps 150

I was recently asked by a family friend to look at a quilt top that her grandmother had started, but died before she could finish. She had found it when her mother died and was going through her mother's things. It had been stuffed in her mother's attic since at least the 1950's when her grandmother passed, so it's been through a lot of aging. It's an all muslin quilt top, with beautiful redwork designs. It was never finished. She had done the redwork designs on each block, had sewn the blocks into the top and had started to do a hand embroidery design between the blocks.

I was asked by this family friend to finish the hand embroidery and to finish the quilt all together. At first she didn't even know if it could be salvaged. She had thought about tossing it if it couldn't be finished! Thankfully, she sought advice first. My plan is to finish the hand embroidery, but with age comes age spots and this top has them. Being that it's a redwork design, all hand embroidered, I don't want to trust it to my washer, even on the delicate cycle. How would you go about cleaning out the age spots on antique muslin and perhaps preventing bleeding from the embroidery threads?

nativetexan

retroclean has been mentioned on here as being a great product to use. soaking quilts only too. no agitation.

Prism99

I would finish the quilt first. At that point, my biggest concern would be bleeding from the red thread.

It is quite possible that the red dye in the thread is not colorfast. What I would do to take care of this is wash the quilt with hot water and Synthrapol in the largest front-loading laundromat washing machine I could find. (A front-loader is easier on a quilt than a top-loader with central agitator. Domestic home front-loaders do not use enough water.) You want a large front-loader in order to have enough water to fully dilute any bleeds. Synthrapol will keep loose dye particles suspended in the water so they can be rinsed away instead of settling into the white fabric. Synthrapol needs hot water to work properly. If you don't want a lot of shrinkage, you might want to use a polyester batting or pre-shrink a cotton batting before quilting. Also, to minimize any shrinkage of the muslin, the quilting needs to be fairly close together (I wouldn't leave quilting lines more than 3" or 4" apart). This is because quilting fabric to the batting causes the batting to take control of shrinkage; the fabric cannot shrink more than the batting. If quilting lines are far apart, though, the fabric can lift away from the batting and shrink more on its own. If the muslin was not pre-washed, it could shrink a *lot*.

You could use a large top-loading machine if you can control the cycles in such a way that the quilt is never agitated by a central agitator. (If you have a top-loader that doesn't have a central agitator, this may be less of a concern, but you still may want to be able to control the cycles.) My biggest concern with a domestic top-loader would be whether or not it holds enough water to fully dilute any dye bleeds. You would want to keep the quilt continuously agitated so that there is no chance of bleeding thread remaining in contact with white fabric for more than a minute or so at a time.

Afterwards, I would treat with Retro Clean (http://www.retroclean.com ) to get rid of the age spots. The reason I wouldn't use Retro Clean first is because you need to allow the quilt to soak -- which would allow bleeding thread to remain in contact with white fabric for a long period of time.

I don't think there is any safe way to prevent the thread from bleeding. This is why I would allow it to bleed if it is going to, but would take precautions that the bleeding dye particles do not stain the white fabric.

Edit: You may need to use the Synthrapol treatment more than once. Examine the damp quilt carefully. If you see any evidence of red bleeds into the white fabric, immediately run the quilt through again with Synthrapol and hot water. This will take errant dye particles out of the muslin, but the process may need to be repeated. (This is worst case scenario.)

Tartan

I am hoping that the red floss used is colour fast. Some of the old ones bleed like crazy.

ManiacQuilter2

Is she the only one wanting to finish the blocks?? You might see if taking a portion of the cleaner part of the quilt and having it professional framed?? Something to think about.

Ps 150

She definitely wants to have it finished. She would like to pass it down to her daughter, grandchildren and great grandchildren. She's a great grandmother who's battling cancer right now and finding her grandmother's quilt was a huge thing for her. I love all of this advice. I do use Synthrapol, but had never heard of Retro Clean.

QuiltMom2

Good luck with salvaging this: it sounds like it means a lot to the family and I'm praying everything works as it should to restore a treasure.

Ps 150

Ok, I've added borders and serged those ends so I could wash the quilt top without fraying. I used Grandma's Spot Remover to pretreat the stains and gently washed it with vinegar, but the stains did not come out. Any suggestions for those terrible age spots?

fairydawn

I have a quilting friend who uses Restoration on old quilts and linens. It says it cleans most age spots and yellowing. It is a washing powder and can be found or ordered at your LQS.

carrieg

Was it stored against any wood? An appraiser told me quilts stored in cedar chests or against any wood will be permanently stained. It is the oil from the wood.
Good luck!