To prewash your fabric or not?????

The age-old question - should you prewash your quilting cotton before you cut into them???

I do not prewash my fabrics. I did when I first started to quilt, but soon realized how much time I would spend doing that so I nixed the idea.

So did that decision come back to haunt me?? Perhaps, but I found a way to solve the problems.

Two months ago, we had a wee issue with water in the basement. I need to get the paperwork rolling this week (I'm home all week!) so we can get started on repairing the basement. There was no time before.

Some of my fabrics/projects got stained. In this particular stack, there was a blue batik that had not been washed and I think that was the culprit for all the staining.

I've been trying to tidy up some of the stuff and sort it out and find homes for everything. I came across some blocks that had gotten stained and I had soaked them when they were still wet, but some of the stains remained. Yesterday, I got out the Dawn dishwashing soap and some hot water. Let's see what happened.


Here's my little Easter basket that I made for M when she was little. She would use this to collect her Easter eggs that I hid around the house. I missed doing that yesterday! I gave away all our Easter decorations last year, but she wanted me to keep the Easter basket.

Easter basket

 The Easter basket was in the pile of stuff that got stained and you can see a nice big blue stain on the back of it.

Stain on the Easter basket

There are some red stains along the right side of this block. 

Stains on the right-hand side of this block

A big blue splotch on this block.

Another big blue stain

I believe this blue batik is the culprit fabric that bled everywhere. You can see that there is some staining on this piece as well in the lower left.

More stains on this piece

And this one uses the same fabric. It's an improv piece from a Ricki Tim's class that I took years ago!

The culprit fabric

So I loaded up the sink with hot water and some Dawn dishwashing liquid (soap). Notice that I did NOT immerse the handle of the Easter basket.

Soaking in the sink with Dawn dishwashing liquid

Look at that water - it turned purple!!!  That was likely because there was excess dye on the blue batik that had never got washed away. I don't understand that because the batik process requires a lot of washing!

The water turned purple during the initial soak

I left everything to soak for a couple of hours. Then I proceeded to rinse the soap out of all the pieces. See the water is now running clear with that blue batik.

The water is now clear

 I just let things dry hanging out on the sink.

Drying on the sink

And what happened???  Remember these items had already been soaked in Synthrapol when they were still wet from the water leak. They've been dry for two months.

The red stains along the side are GONE!!!!!

The block is like brand new

The big blue splotch is GONE

The bleeding of the blue is gone

The bluish marks on the orange have disappeared

And here's my Easter basket. It was soaking wet and it's still damp this morning.

Easter basket is wet

 But look - the blue stain is gone!  There was also a slight blue stain on the handle which didn't quite disappear because I didn't immerse the handle all the way into the water. If I didn't tell you about it, you wouldn't notice it. I'm not soaking this one again!!

The big blue stain is gone

Will this test change my mind about prewashing my fabrics? Nope - I still don't have time to wash before I use my fabrics. It just means that I need to be careful. I've always been careful. You can pretty much look at the fabrics and identify which ones will bleed. Not always - I know that. But if in doubt - test them. Thoroughly wet the fabric and let it dry on a white paper towel. If there's going to be a problem, the fabric will bleed on the paper towel. Then you can decide how you'll deal with it!

I'm not sure what today will bring. Hopefully, I'll be madly sewing up a quilt. The fabric is coming directly from the mill and it's late! The quilt is due today!  While I await word on the shipment, I'll be at the Monday sewing group! I've missed the last three weeks and I miss chatting with everyone!

On that note, I'm out of here.

Have a super day!!!!


Ciao!