Seb58

Hello everyone,

Up until now, I have merely been active on the Vintage Sewing Machines part of the forum; quilting is not part of my heritage and the skills required are beyond me yet the craftsmaship and the beauty of the finished items are amazing and I must admit I have dropped my jaw many a time looking at what you achieve. As it is, I humbly post here to beg for advice.

I recently dug from my mom's attic a quilted blanket which was handmade by a neighbour and presented to my grandmother for her wedding back in the 1950s. It is not a quilt as such but I nonetheless turn to you for advice on how to clean it.
It is made of maroon sateen (cotton I think; I pulled a thread burnt it and it went up in flames smelling like burnt feathers) filled in with carded raw wool.
For the moment it smells a bit strongly but I'm going to let it air outside for a couple of days. What I'm most concerned about is the sateen cover it is a bit stained (my mum let a puppy sleep on the bed where the quilted cover was and what with puppy drool and some other unspeakable accidents, it is not quite as clean as one would wish! lol)

I realise my quilted blanket may be outside of your domain of expertise but I have failed to find advice and I turn to you for remedies if such exist since the last reputable dry-cleaner in my small town only recently closed and there is in a reasonable driving radius but those minute dry-cleaners you find in malls ...


Thank you for any advice you may be able or willing to provide and many many apologies if this request is not within the scope of this forum

Here are some pictures of the blanket and a close up of the filling
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Tartan

What a shame the dog slept on it. I don’t know if baking soda sprinkled on and vacuuming off would be enough. If not, then I would spread it out on a sheet on the shaded lawn and run hose water through it until you thought it smelled fresh. Getting it soaking wet though will make it hard to dry. Good luck!

meyert

would febreeze help with the smell?

dunster

A quilt is just two layers of fabric sewn together with some sort of stuffing in between, so your blanket is indeed a quilt. (And you would be welcome to post here regardless.) My mother had a very similar quilt, probably bought in the same time frame, similar color, also some sort of satin or sateen. I don't know what was inside her quilt, but I'm quite sure it was washed in the washing machine and probably spread out to dry. I would hate to tell you to do that, in case it didn't work out well for you, but with the close lines of quilting I think that is what I would try, after stitching up any openings where the batting could escape.

quiltedsunshine

Grandma's Secret Spot Remover is pretty amazing. You can get it at Walmart and on Amazon.

It might be a good idea to wash the quilt in the bathtub by hand. The last one I did in the bathtub needed a few hours to drain the water off before I could lay it out to dry. You could lay a sheet on the floor, then lay the quilt on the sheet. Set a fan on it to air dry. Or if it's not too heavy, you could hang it on a clothesline outside. The wool batting should dry pretty quick.

Seb58

Thank you for the advice!
One night outside has helped the smell a bit already.
I think I will try washing it in the bathtub and see what comes of it 😊

maviskw

If it was made in the 50's with wool inside, that wool is not really washable. It will shrink terribly. Dry cleaning is one option for raw wool.
We always took the quilt apart (they were tied), washed the cover and sent the wool to the woolen mill to be
re-carded. Then sometimes, we would encase the wool batt with some cheese-cloth-like fabric so that the next time the cover needed washing, the batt may still be in good condition.

Seb58

Thanks maviskw...
Today I spoke to my grandma on the phone and without telling her that my mom ruined her quilt lol I managed to extract from her that she did that when she was a child: they would take quilts apart, wash the cover on one side, give the wool batting a good rinse in the stream (she grew up on a farm), check and replace any wool that was past its prime then card the wool and reform the quilt. They did that with every quilt and wool mattress in the house and it took the better part of a hot summer week to complete...
To be honest I lack the courage (and tools and stream lol) to undertake such a process... Since the quilt is unusable as it is, I may as well try the bathtub cleaning as a last resort and come what may...

Jingle

All I can say is, good luck. I would not know what to do with it.

Seb58

thanks!