I had bought some material for a quilt for my SIL. Nothing is going to be sewn without going to the wash first. Anyway, I had bought maroon, cream, turquiose, and a light blue. I really expected the maroon to bleed. Well, it was the turquiose! Would never have expected that to bleed. I had paid $9 a yard for this material at the LQS. Am now a firm believer in pre washing. Have been sewing etc most of my life and have never had an issue with overdye.

All it takes is "once bitten to be twice shy". Glad you prewashed and caught it before being bitten.

Speaking of Dyes bleeding ...... so profusely at that!

You know - I don't think my mother or grandmother EVER pre-washed cloth - and never seemed to have a problem with colors bleeding - even reds, or blacks

Remember when ... some time ago the government cracked down on our domestic cloth mills for leaching dyes into our streams and rivers ..... (so customers such as my mom didn't have to worry about bleeding?)

Where are those mills now? closed ... where are those jobs? Overseas ....

Yes, now we are importing all types of cloth from dozens of countries that are sending their dyes for us to wash into those same streams and rivers .... And we ooh and ahh at the "new" wonder fabrics .... batiks and embellished and whatever ...

Ladies and Gents ..... beautiful? Definitely! ..... but:
What are we doing here?

We lost jobs and mills and now we don't really care about polluting our streams with other countries' dyes? .....

Why did we make such a stink to get the government to clean up our own domestic dyes going into those same waterways? -and have our moms complain about the high cost of imported fabrics to boot!

Weird world we live in, for sure....

I'm not a fan of pre-washing..however I do.. to certain colors or designers..I learned the hard way.. to wash anything by Jinny Beyer !!

Welcome to the world of washers!

I haven't figured out a way of telling which fabric might have excss dye by "just looking at it" yet.

I think it's just as much of a bother to cut off a little piece to see what it will do as it is to dunk the whole piece. The added benefit - no little corner is missing from the piece.

Of the hundreds of fabrics I've washed, I think I've come across less than 10 that I consider real stinkers.

An orange - that one was the worst
A teal
A green
A purple
A navy
A yellow

A stinker is one that continues to color the water a lot after ten dunkings.

Don't recall any red being a real bleeder after I got the initial excess dye out of it.

My comfort level is: Can I put this in the wash with a very light color and not worry about the light color being a different color when the load is done.

I alway pre-wash. The worst fabric bleeding I have had was a beautiful royal blue from my LQS. I washed it 5 times and it continued to bleed so I replaced the fabric with another, and I still have not used the bleeder.

It makes me crazy that in this age of know how, there is still the issue of fabrics bleeding/running. It is not an issue that is confined to low cost fabrics ... I have had "top " of the line company fabrics that ran .. and am having it happen with greater frequency than ever before. "back in the day" it seemed as though red was always always a suspect color, and purple was a second.... now its just seems like a crap shoot.
If there was one issue I wish the manufactures would get on board with is some bolt labeling as to the colorfastness of the fabric. I would pay a premium for a "guarenteed not to run/bleed" fabric. In fact I feel I already am paying a premium for the top manufactures.
Ok .. I'm off the soap box now.

I always pre wash. Blues and purples seem to bleed the most.

I was told by my first teacher to always wash first. As Melody said anything by Ginny Beyer. I have found and taught my BFF that if the blighter keeps bleeding, line dry, iron with a hot iron, then dip again. May have to do it a couple of times but it works better than salt or vinegar.

I am making a scrap tumbler quilt with some washed & some unwashed fabrics. If I wash with color catcher after it
is all pieced, will I be safe? Will they shrinking amount be okay?