Success, bleeding, failure and unexpected resurrection

It’s been an up and down week. After months of dithering, I took the chance and tried to remove the blue wash out marks from my WHITE SILK quilt with cotton backing, cotton fabrics and wool batting. How’s that for a complicated mix. Oh, did I mention, there were several bleeders in there?

I have talked with and written some of the best dyers and competition quilters I know about my dilemma, so I got solid advice on how to proceed. BTW, the whole very hot water + Dawn thing works for cotton, not silk. It all started out so well:

I put my quilt in ice cold water in the big tub, with the plan to swish it for 10 min or so. My only point was to wash out all the blue markings. If you don’t wash (not spray) them out, they will come back when heat hits your quilt and it ain’t pretty! I put in FOUR of Dharma’s color catchers, which are supposed to be superior to others.

It’s looking good at this point. After the photo, I covered it up and put it in the shade. I put it on my fake grass so that it would hold it up off the surface and allow the water to drain, not puddle and catch the color.

There was zero color in the color catchers, so I thought I was good to go. Nope:

That one dog gone red silk….. So I put it back in the tub and did Synthrapol for 15 min, rinsed and tried again. The Synthrapol yellowed the white a little bit, which grieves me. I looooooved the artic white it was:

It’s not horrible, but I know how white it used to be. The red silk appeared to be unimpressed by my efforts:

As it dried, the red became less and less prominent. It’s not completely dry yet. But it looks like I will barely see the red bleed!!! Hallelujah, there is hope! I’ll report in next week as to how it turned out.

I  LOVE this quilt! I’ve been working on it on and off for 2 years. One of the points of the quilt is the trapunto bubbles, I love those bubbles and it takes trapunto into the Modern era.

Ah, but we’re not done with bleeding! My small group is making blocks for a Ukraine quilt. I thought I would make my block now and not wait. It was pretty:

Ahhhh, but that dog gone blue bled like crazy! This time I used Retayne to fix the color. And there was a LOT of color to fix!

Of course then the block was a mess from the hot water, so I am in the process of blocking it out. Sigh. But the bleed stopped.

I did have a wonderful visit with the Flying Needles of Woodland, CA! 15 enthusiastic students had fun with Blooming Sheers:

There were two brand spanking new free motion quilters:

This is amusing – the piece is for Ukraine; the sunflower in the middle captures their colors. But see that blobby thing in the lower left hand corner?

That is Putin, a snail! LOL!

And Sherry is going to make hers into one of these cool fabric storage boxes that will be sold at their upcoming Quilt Show May 21 and 22nd. I hope to be there!

And Roberta made a 3-D fluffy flying angel!

So that was my success for the week, seeing the fabulous work of the Woodland guild. Life is a balance, no? I’m heading out for 3 days with the Carson Valley Quilt Guild in Reno, NV so that should be a fun weekend!

I’ll be posting at:

Nina-Marie’s Off the Wall Friday
and
Finished or Not Friday.