When you shop for fabrics to use in your quilts, it is important to remember that not all fabrics are created equal. If you have been quilting for some time, or just happen to recall some of the fabrics from your mother’s or grandmother’s stash, you can probably tell a difference between today’s fabrics and the fabrics they used.

Annie Smith, owner of craft media company SimpleArts and podcast broadcaster of “Quilting Stash,” has some thoughts about today’s fabrics. Annie’s got 25 years of quilting experience and has taught quilting and other needle arts full time for about 10 years. Fabric selection is just one area of her quilting expertise.

Sometimes when you look at the back side of a fabric, it looks almost solid white on the back, like the dye did not go all the way through. Annie says that is probably due to the printing process itself, and she does closely relate that to quality.

A really top quality fabric, according to Annie, is one that has a back side difficult to distinguish from the top. “I’ve actually used the wrong side of the fabric in the past to stay with the same color that I’m using in the quilt and provide a little lighter value of that particular fabric,” Annie confessed.

“People can never tell that it’s the wrong side of the fabric. They just think it’s a lighter version of the fabric that I was using before,” she added. If you’ve ever wondered how to gauge quality of a fabric, start looking at the back side. You will soon notice these differences Annie talks about.

Another fabric dye concern is that when the dye is heavy, some of it bleeds during the wash cycle. Does that mean the fabric is not good? “My feeling is it is excess dye that just hasn’t been washed out. Our fabrics are getting better and better. We really don’t have to worry so much about bleeding fabric,” Annie said.

Annie also has suggestions for quilters who live in areas with a high concentration of chlorine added to their water. She says water with lots of chlorination added can cause fabric that might not typically bleed to do so when washed.

“You can always neutralize your wash water,” she said. To do this, Annie recommends buying anti-chlorine tablets from an aquarium store. These are the tablets used to properly prepare water for fresh water aquariums. Drop them into your wash water to knock out the chlorine.

You can also use color catchers or dye magnets if you are worried about your fabric bleeding. While they are actually made to reduce dye bleeding in typical laundry, quilters love them for their projects, too.

They look like dryer sheets but you drop them in your laundry water instead of putting them in the dryer. Color catching sheets are made by familiar names like Shout and Woolite. These sheets draw dye to them so it won’t bleed into any other fabrics you might be washing along them with.

While the color catchers are designed to draw bleeding ink to them, there are also products you can use to prevent your fabrics from bleeding. Annie likes two popular anti-bleed products, Synthrapol and Retain. Follow the manufacturer’s directions. These also go into your wash water.

To find the color catcher sheets or anti-bleed products, look in the laundry aisle of your favorite store. If you cannot find them there, check with your local craft or fabric specialty store. As mentioned before, color catchers and dye magnet sheets are made for home laundry so you won’t likely have any trouble at all finding them.

The blue fabric in this quilt block bled into the purple fabric next to it. It was hand dyed fabric, and not all of the dye was washed out before I used it in my quilt.

Happy Quilting!

Penny Halgren

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P.S.  After much research, it turns out that Prang is the brand that holds its color best on fabric. Careful, though, your school might not like that brand - - -

©2010, Penny Halgren
Penny is a quilter of more than 28 years who seeks to interest new quilters and provide them with the resources necessary to create beautiful quilts.

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