In the mail.

Well, the wedding quilt is done.  Not without some angst however. It’s not perfect but I doubt anyone but me will care and  probably will not notice.  The real challenge came when I washed the quilt after taking some lovely pictures.   Into the wash it went and along with the quilt I tossed in some of the Shout Color Catchers.  I know that the batik has such bold colors that there was a possibility of bleeding but I didn’t know how many times they really needed to be washed before the color wouldn’t bleed.  After the first wash and tossing in the dryer I thought it was fine.  The color catchers really did catch some color.  It was not until I pulled it out of the dryer however that I realized the many of the  dark purple squares had bled all over the white.  It made me feel sick to think that maybe this fabric hadn’t been washed and now ruined all my work.  After thinking about it for a while I decided that I wasn’t out anything if I tried to remove the purple from the white.  I used stain stick and Clorox2 and washed it three more times.  I ended up adding 3 color catchers each time as well.  After the third wash I put the quilt in the dryer.  When I pulled it out it was warm and dry and for the most part the purple was all gone and the colors were still bright.  If you look closely and you know it’s there on a few of the squares you can still see a bit of duskiness but it really looked ok.  What a relief!  I’m not sure if that purple fabric never got washed or if the color was so dark that there was more color to bleed out.  I guess I’ll know that next time I use such a dark batik that I need to be more careful.

The next challenge was how to wrap it and send it.  Now these are young California professionals and transplants from Washington so they believe in a “green” lifestyle.  This was a soft and squishy quilt and it was going in a box so I decided to pack it in a market bag and add a bow and now they will have two gifts.  It’s in the mail and I’m on to different projects.