I showed the GAZ quilt on the line after I had washed it and when it was dry it had a faint pinkish tinge. Very, very faint but I decided I ought to fix it. I had washed it with 2 colour catchers and, as you can see below, they did a good job.

I went on the net looking for Synthrapol but when I researched it, it just said it was a strong detergent and I thought what I needed was something to remove the excess colour. At the time I didn’t realise that that is what all colour removers are.

I found Dylon Colour Run Remover which seemed to be exactly what I needed. When I had first washed it I had used cold water but the remover said to use 60C water and full cotton cycle so that is what I did. This, coupled with the fact that my washing machine is a front loader and therefore doesn’t use much water meant that the remover released more dye from the offending red backing and dyed the whites of my quilt bright pink.

You can imagine how I felt at 11 o’clock at night with a bright pink ruined Christmas present quilt. Not happy. I emailed Dylon and then I set to trying to fix it. First I soaked it in the bath in Nappisan coloursafe and squished it to try to remove the colour. Then I rinsed it and wrung it out and placed it back in the machine on a cold water wash with my remaining colour catcher, a white towel and Cold Power liquid detergent.

To my relief most of the pink came out and after drying in the dryer at midnight the quilt looked almost all right. The whites from the recycled shirt were white again but the whites in the new movie fabrics are still slightly pink. I had to post it the next day so I didn’t think to take disaster pics.

The Dylon response to my email was really good. They asked me to call their hotline so I could give them more details. It turns out that if I had had more time and not already sent the quilt I could have sent it to them and they would have washed it again with more remover in their top loading machine until all the excess colour was removed. It is likely then that my quilt would have come good. They said the problem was that there was a huge load of excess dye in this quilt and that fact coupled with my water saving front loader is why it left a residue in the quilt. They were very understanding and very kind and I was impressed with their service. They are planning to blog about this too.

Have I learned my lesson? I know there are many of you out there that always wash your fabrics and I don’t. Colour catchers usually do it for me and this time had I had more they probably would have done the job fine. What’s more the fabric that caused the problem, the backing, I actually tested with detergent and cold water on a scrap and nothing happened. Figure that one out!! I’m still not planning to wash my fabrics first, I’ll just use cold water and extra colour catchers.