katykwilt

While I wash all my fabrics (on their way to the shelves), if there are just a few I'll toss them in with like colored clothes or if there are a bunch, like colors get washed together. I have a setting on my new washer that's listed as "Hand Wash". It's pretty gentle, but still do FQs by hand as so many others have listed.

TonnieLoree

My father would kill me if I ever did that!

justflyingin

Your father would kill you if you washed fabric in the sink?

Why?

watson's mom

I wash like colours together (reds with reds, blues with blues, etc) hot water to shrink, delicate cycle to stop fraying, and one cup of vinegar to set the colours. Knock on wood, have never had a bleed yet. I remove from the washer right away. I don't use soap for this.

pieces

Its not necessary to wash each piece of of fabric separately.
I prewash my fabrics and put 3 or 4 pieces of
like colors together.
Good quality fabrics seldom bleed.
I sew up the cut edges so they don't ravel too bad and
wash on the hand wash/permanent press.
I use vinegar in the rinse water.

clsurz

I keep hearing about folks worrying about colors bleeding and can say I must be bless because when I buy fabric I come home and put several yards at a time in the washer with no problems and have yet to see any of it bleed.

I could not see myself washing only one fabric at a time. It would drive me nuts with all the time it would take to wash several yards of fabric every time I go out there and buy and have to spend several hours doing so or perhaps even a few days.

I use the hand wash cycle on my machine and will run several yards at a time and use the warm setting with a little bit of liquid soap.

Quilted Horse

I wash all my fabric when it comes into the house. I don't want to have to guess further down the road if it was washed or not (and be sorry that I guessed wrong).
I sort all fabric into light and dark and throw it in with my regular wash and a Shout Color Catcher sheet (you can buy them in the grocery store near the dryer sheets).
I have never had a problem, but I usually only buy better quality quilt store quality fabric (not Joannes or Walmart). But...that goes out the window if I get a good thrift store bargain - then I'll buy anything!!!

brendadawg

Couldn't live without myi Color Catcher! I wash several colors together and so far, it's been okay. I'm careful with reds especially though.

bearisgray

First, I overcast or serge the raw edges of new fabrics.

I soak like colors together in hot water in pots and pans - or buckets. Basically, if one of them has bad manners, it won't hurt the other pieces.

If, for example, I find that the green pot has green water, then I will go through the fabrics piece by piece to find the culprit.

The culprit will get additional rinses until the water barely turns color.

My DH isn't real thrilled when he finds pots all over the kitchen when I'm soaking fabrics, but - oh, well.

Then, after I'm reasonably sure that they will play nicely together, I run them all together through a very short, gentle cycle in cold or tepid water.

After all, when after a quilt is made, all the colors have to get washed together at the same time.

I prefer to dry the pieces in a dryer, but line or rack drying also works. When line drying, I try to fold the selvages together and pin the selvage edges to the line. I hope that doing it that way will minimize distortion and stretching of the fabric.


I've only run into several pieces that were bleeders that never stopped coloring the water. (This is over about 40 years of fabric accumulation).

One was orange, one was dark blue, one was turquoise, one was purple. And I think there may have been a green one.

We have a septic system - so the water output does matter. DH grew up in a house where water was carried in - and the used water was carried out - one does become very aware of water usage when that is the case.

DGDs were living with us for a while - DH practically went ballistic if all he found in the dryer was one pair of thong underwear. :roll:

janb

Color Catcher is great - amazing how much color stays on the sheets....the last one I did was a lovely blue, I used 6 sheets before they came clear. Imagine what would have happened if I had not used the color catcher...whoa!!!!