quiltingbuddy

I'm not sure if I spelled that right, but Someone mentioned it in another post. I've never heard of it. Is it a soap? How do you use it?

I made a generous queen sized quilt that took me literally almost 5 years to finish with needle-turn appliqué and tons of 1" squares that had some bleeding from one of the red fabrics when I washed it. I think the quilt was too large to get enough water flow around it in the machine so the dye catchers did not work. I'm wondering if I try washing it in the bathtub with whatever the Synthrapole is if that might take out the excess dye? Where do you buy it? I appreciate any help/advice you wonderful girls who seem to know everything can give me.

thimblebug6000

It's certainly worth a try, although it does recommend you using hot water for it to work best.
http://www.dharmatrading.com/chemica...detergent.html

PaperPrincess

It's spelled without the "e" synthrapol. They sell it lots of places, my LQS carries it, you can get it on Amazon or Dharma Trading. You hit the nail on the head about water levels. With color catchers and Synthrapol (which keeps excess dye in suspension) you need lots of water to rinse well. Sometimes the dye that bled will be heat set if you dried it in the dryer, so sometimes it will wash out with subsequent washings, sometimes not, but it sure is worth a shot!

Prism99

Synthrapol is widely available online. Some quilt shops carry it too. It's a detergent that keeps unset dye particles suspended in the water so they rinse away. Because the "bled" dyes are not permanently set, Synthrapol can also lift the bleeds out of fabric. It requires ***lots*** of ***hot*** water to work properly. With bad bleeds, it can take more than one washing with Synthrapol.

The easiest method is to use a top-loading washer; just be sure to skip the machine agitation cycles and hand agitate instead. Basically fill with hot water and Synthrapol, stop machine and hand agitate, advance to spin cycle, refill with hot water and Synthrapol, etc. Spinning is safe for a quilt; machine agitation (assuming your top-loader has a central agitator) is very hard on a quilt.

Here is a link to a thread with photos that shows how the original poster got dye bleeds out of her quilt using Synthrapol and a large bath tub:
http://www.quiltingboard.com/main-f1...x-t144836.html
This was a case where red was the bleeding color too.

Edit: Here's a link to just one of the Synthrapol products on Amazon. You do not need a lot of it -- just a teaspoon or so per gallon of water.
http://www.amazon.com/Craft-Synthrap...dp/B000YZ3UHQ/