Wholecloth Essential

One of the things that I thought was important to mention in the construction of a Wholecloth was the marking and the washing...

I used a blue water soluble marker (and made an amazing mess in some areas) to get the main designs onto the white background. As I went along I sprayed the Wholecloth with water to get rid of some of the lines as I find them quite distracting when stitching.

Towards the end, most of the marks were gone, however for my last few photo shoots, I had a few pockets of re-appearing blue marks on the front and on the back. For the purpose of taking photos I managed to shift them, so that it looked as if they had all gone, however I knew that I  had just managed to spray the blue marks into the wadding and was aware that they would eventually re-surface.

It is winter here and not the ideal time to wash quilts, however I felt uncomfortable leaving this as I have seen in the past how these blue spots can turn slightly brown over time. With a whitish Wholecloth, not a good idea. So, on the weekend we had a bit of sun and my quilt took the plunge

Always makes me nervous, however given the amount of marker in this quilt, this had to be done.

Kringe!!...not a pretty picture! In order to get the marker completely out, you do have to totally submerge the quilt, rinse it several times, and at the end you are left with this crumbled up mess.

After that I had it outside on a flat surface for a while to get it to a stage where it was reasonably damp and now it is nicely blocked, taking up some space in the kitchen area. This will take a few days to dry in this climate and I will just have to make sure that the cats stay off it.

I did spent some time on this, gently stretching it into shape...this is as good as it gets! I am a bit short in the width by about half an inch. I am pretty sure you could probably stretch it even further, but I decided to leave it as it makes perfect sense to me that it is more compacted on the crosswise grain and the quilt was not entirely square before the wash.

So while the temptation is there to just spray the blue water soluble markers off I would urge others to wash their quilts after finishing...just not worth the hassle after. I had a few brownish marks in one of my pieces recently and I thought that this probably happened as I had just sprayed my designs and then left it sitting on the sewing table where it would have gotten a fair bit of sun in the day...that was enough to set the marker.  

Karin

Disaster Averted

It had to happen one day....a whole cup of coffee was spilled over the table runner on the dining table.

I thought I take the opportunity to share how I wash and dry my quilts as I am often asked about this.

First at all, my quilts are for use and hence should withstand washing in the machine on a gentle cycle. I have found people are really reluctant to put quilts in the washing machine. I have learned very quickly that the more quilted a piece is, the better it washes and the distortion is fairly minimal and a gentle cycle should do it no harm.

Now for the soiled table runner...I  did not put it in the washing machine as it needed to be rinsed straight away. I used cold water...experience has taught me that cold water is the way to go to avoid stains. Coffee came out straight away and no stain was left, so I put a bit of washing detergent in to wash it a bit....yes, the red fabric started to bleed a bit (and I am pretty sure I washed this fabric beforehand!), so I put a colour catcher into the water to avoid a major disaster. As it continued to run ever so slightly, I used vinegar in the end to made the dye more stable and that did the trick.

After rinsing a number of times (all in cold water), I  rolled the runner up like you would do with woollen clothing and gently squeezed out the excess water. Then I put it outside on the clothes hanger and gently stretched it into its normal rectangular shape and let it sit there for the rest of the day and night. I only put it on the washing line once it was almost dry for the wind to go through, so that there was no distortion. Came out absolutely brilliant.



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Karin