Bleeding Fabrics
I’ve been working with hand dyed fabrics and fusible web lately. When steaming the fabrics, I was surprised to see a lot of color coming through onto my pressing cloth. See what I mean?
Click image for a larger view
Only the hand dyed fabric bled. Thankfully, it didn’t show against the dark background.
I never wash my fabrics, since I don’t wash my quilts. But, if I’m likely to use fusible much, I’ll have to rethink this.
Ellen Lindner
Hi Ellen,
This means that you hand-dyes have not been fully washed out. The number of times you wash is not the critical factor. Washing out with VERY hot water is what is needed. Warm just won’t do it. Then you can be assured your hand-dyes will not bleed, even if they are steamed.
You can do this with any hand-dyes that you are unsure about, whether they are freshly dyed, or whether they have been in the stash for years.
Enjoy!
Ellen, I always wash my fabrics and sometimes they still run even ones that are not hand dyed. I remember making my mom a santa quilt for Christmas about 5 years ago. All the fabrics were washed before making the quilt. I washed the quilt when I was finished with it and the red ran into the white fabric on the quilt. I had to use a bleach pen to get it out. So you never really know what can happen.
Thanks, Carol and Chris, for sharing your expertise. I’m definitely going to have consider hot water washing in the future.
Hi Ellen,
With hand dyes or with fabrics from places like Africa I always wash them at least once in hot water with Retayne. That sets the dyes and ensures they won’t bleed. You might want to do that with stuff you dye yourself as well.