booklady1952

I've spent the past two weeks working feverishly on a scrap quilt top with lots of piecing. Last night when pressing some blocks, I discovered that one of the red fabrics I used will bleed. (Found a block where my iron leaked a few drops of water & some red bled into adjoining light covered blocks.) There's not a whole lot of that fabric in the top, but I want to prevent a disaster.

Need some advise on using Retayne (I guess this is the best route to go.) Should I piece together all the blocks & attach the borders before using the Retayne? Or do I have the top quilted & bound before attempting the Retayne? I hate to have the expense of the quilting, if I can't prevent the bleeding from occurring.

DebraK

I think you need to use synthrapol rather than retayne if you've already pieced the fabric into a top, and I think you'll have a mess if you try to wash the top if it's not quilted.

Synthapol is very easy to use. Just a cap full added to your wash.

Tartan

Retayne is used in hot water BEFORE the fabric goes in a quilt. Synthrapol in hot water is supposed to keep loose dye suspended in the water instead of on the quilt. How hard would it be to replace the bleeder fabric in the quilt top?

P.S. When I read the title of your post, I thought it might be rotary cutting accident. Fabric is replaceable, fingers are not.

bearisgray

I would replace those red pieces.

From what t have read, one can do damage control after an item is completed, but I think it would be more of an iffy thing.

To my way of thinking, using a known bleeding fabric is in the same category as leaving a rotten apple in with a batch of still good ones.

However, it is your quilt. You might consider experimenting with some scraps sewn together to see how nasty that red is.

Prism99

Absolutely do *NOT* use Retayne at this point! It is useful only to set dyes in yardage and at this point it is too late to use it on your red fabric.

What you want is Synthrapol and ***lots*** of water to dilute the bleeds as much as possible. I use the largest front-loading washing machine at our local laundromat (as long as you are sure people don't wash horse blankets in it), hot water, and Synthrapol.

Finish the quilt -- finish the top, layer, quilt and bind -- before washing in Synthrapol. Trying to wash an unquilted top or unquilted blocks can result in a huge mess if some of the fabrics shrink and distort, plus you can get a lot of ravelled seams. Once the top is moderately quilted, batting controls fabric shrinkage (no fabric can shrink more than the batting shrinks) and you no longer have exposed seams that can ravel.

feline fanatic

A most excellent article was recently written by a dyer on bleeding fabrics. Her conclusion is liquid dawn dish detergent plus LOTS of HOT water works just as well if not better. She used the dawn and submerges her quilt in the bathtub full of hot water (so hot she uses special gloves to prevent scalding) This article is comprehensive and thorough. She really has a ton of insight

http://vickiwelsh.typepad.com/field_...read-this.html

bearisgray

I have a piece of teeal denim that I tried the Dawn and bot water on. It is still releasing color. After about twenty changes of water.

Prism99

Synthrapol and Dawn work if the manufacturer set the color correctly but did not rinse out all the excess dye in the fabric. Fibers can absorb only so much dye; any excess has to bleed off. The role of Synthrapol/Dawn and lots of hot water is to dilute excess dye and keep the particles suspended in water so they don't settle back into (other) fabric. I'm not convinced it is useful using it on just one piece of fabric unless the fabric is multi-colored -- so that, say, a bleeding color has the risk of settling into the white pattern in the fabric. Synthrapol would normally be used for a finished quilt to prevent a bleed from settling into other fabrics.

When the problem is not just excess dye, but rather that the manufacturer has not properly set any of the dye in the fabric, the fabric will continue to bleed. This is because you are not rinsing out just excess dye; you are rinsing out all of the dye in the fabric, bit by bit. This is a situation where you might want to use Retayne. However, Retayne has its limitations. Even if it does set the dye, the setting is not permanent in hot water. Typically if a fabric still bleeds after two treatments with Retayne, it should not be used in a quilt. Even with a fabric that does stop bleeding with Retayne, I would use it in a quilt only if (1) it was the perfect fabric, and (2) I knew the quilt would be washed only in cold water.

bearisgray

I usually make thingsf for people who think life is good if things get washed on " regular cycle"

For me, the only proper thing go do with a bleeder is go put it in the trash. I don ' t want someone else ' s project to get ruined by a piece of bad fabric, so I will not donate to anyone.

ube quilting

This is what I would do, too. Get the quilt done and then wash w/ Syn.
peace