cindi

Funny you should ask this. While I can’t respond on fading, my friend Peggi (Peckish on this board) and I had a long conversation about this fabric, albeit mostly from a longarm quilting perspective, but also from a piecing perspective. These fabrics are notorious for white “runs” when sewing because the fabric is not printed with color all the way through. When sewing or quilting, the needle turns the thread, showing the white back of the fabric. So each stitch can produce a run, ruining the fabric. This can be worse on certain sections of the fabric, depending on color and tightness of the weave, The tighter the weave, the more likely it will run.

Bethanne Nemish did an entire series of posts on FB about this problem from a longarm perspective, as it is becoming more and more common. She has found the best way to avoid this while longarming is with a #16 light ballpoint needle with Sewers Aid applied to the needle along with a longer stitch length and “silkier” threads such as Glide, silk and Isacord. I suspect the same will need to be done for piecing, too. Prewashing digital fabrics is also essential to minimize runs, and different colors from the same line will behave differently. Not all will run, but it will more than likely happen at some time when piecing or quilting with digital fabric.

However, in our conversation we determined that because of these run problems it will probably result in LA quilters adding a clause in their contracts that they cannot be responsible for runs resulting from digital fabrics and many may stop taking quilts made with digital fabrics altogether.

With these fabrics becoming more and more popular, fabric companies need to assess this and come up with some type of solution to the “run” problem. Right now there is no way to 100% avoid these runs. It’s a “buyer beware” situation that the fabric companies seem unconcerned about.