Experiment: Can I trust color saturated charms? Result #1: Yes.
 

An experiment. This piece was made for the sole purpose of seeing if I can trust unwashed color saturated charms. Using a solid white background made it as challenging (for the charms) as it can get. The white was prewashed. (I prewash ALL my fabric, so it makes me crazy to not be able to apply this to charms.) It was washed in a short 4 minute, cold water, delicate cycle--and put through the rinse cycle twice. I added one Shout Color Catcher. I dried it on high heat. Ta-da! The Color Catcher had no color caught that I could see. We can trust them. Just in case someone else was wondering... I'm sharing the news.

:)Pretty experiment!

With charms, you can't do a test sample. Usually, it is your dark shades of blues, reds and purples that might bleed. Very pretty quilt. I never put quilts in the dryer on high heat. Low tumble dry but that was probably part of your experiment.

Yup--part of the experiment and I knew the colors that could cause the trouble... so included them twice. I had to add something else to make it pretty. lol

Saturated colors from different manufacturers will occasionally behave differently. The brand from which this pack came was great, obviously, but not all will definitely be so.

Jan in VA

I plan on most of the quilts that I give away to be washed with warm water, so I always wash the quilts I finish with warm water and color catchers, just to make sure. I don't dry them in the dryer, though. Most people here don't have a dryer.

Glad you were able to do this! I agree. The only thing that I'd still be cautious in regards to bleeding with would be batiks as sometimes there is excess dye. Printed fabrics should be fine.

With solids -- and even some batiks -- the issue isn't just bleeding but crocking. Crocking is more likely to occur when you wash/dry a larger quilt because there is more fabric rubbing against other fabric. It is one of many arguments against washing/drying on anything other than the lowest, coldest, slowest setting. I am fortunate that my clients' children (the parents) generally wash just about everything in cold water with specially formulated Cold Water detergent. So all I need to do is discuss the benefit of drying on low heat or air drying the baby quilts & have never had any problems. My mom is from the generation that grew up without modern detergents & had to wash bedding in warm/hot water to get it clean. Dryers used to label the hottest setting "cotton" so she washes quilts/quilted items in Hot Water & dries on High heat and then can't understand why everything else in the load ends up with the quilt colors on them (crocking -- I'm sure because I pre-wash everything due to allergies and wash again 2x when finished quilting) and the quilts end up shrunk down to 2/3 to 3/4 the original size, and wear out 4-5x faster than similar items at my siblings' homes. I've tried explaining it to her to no avail. I just can't afford to buy 50% more fabric 4x as often to accommodate her washing habits so she doesn't get even get my practice quilts anymore.

I agree. I have one Color Catcher that has pinkish parts due to washing a quilt that was finished--and everything had been prewashed. It had some red batiks. The Color Catcher did the job there too. I really only worry about batiks--which of course is what is in here--with the exception of the background. But these pieces seemed very dark--so it helped build my trust to use them.