Washing Ye Olde Cottons

Before I do anything with the very old piece of 19th-century patchwork, I needed to give it a bath:

Upfront disclaimer: I don't recommend washing very old cottons, especially if it's a historically important piece. The fabric processes of 140 years ago were very different from ours, and the fabric can easily disintegrate and/or dyes can bleed even during gentle hand washing. If you need to clean an old piece, consult with a quilt restoration expert or antique textile cleaning service first.

My patchwork piece felt strong enough to withstand immersion, and although it had some red in it (notorious for dye-bleeding in any era) I thought I'd risk giving it a brief soak in cold water with a mild detergent.

And the results:

I think the bath brightened it up nicely.

Comments

nightsmusic said…

Even I can see it in the pictures. Looks wonderful. I know I've always been a bit leery of washing things like that, but if you don't take the chance, you're working with dirty fabric and sooner or later, you'll want it clean. Better before you do all that work on it than to quilt it and then wash it and have it fall apart.

May 19, 2020 at 7:59 AM

Old Loves & Such

My guy kindly bought me my favorite Chinese take out the other night, and my fortune cookie offered up an interesting story starter: This sounds sweet, right? Only the first thing I thought of was an old love coming back from the dead . . . . must be October. In other lovely news, my favorite hand-dyed thread artist, Lorraine from Colour Complements , is moving her business from Etsy to her own web site. Many of my favorite sellers on Etsy are leaving due to the whole "free shipping" coercion debacle, which has also soured me on the site. To show support I did a little shopping at Lorraine's web site and got in these: I love her threads and trims; you simply can't buy anything like them anywhere. Her work makes my specialty thread box look like a treasure chest: At night I'm spending just as hour working on quilting the scrap project runner, and I'm making slow progress: I'll keep quilting the runner while I try to decide on a design for t...

Love Means This

Invested in a couple of hand-dyed bundles from one of my favorite fabric artists. This one said "Make me into something for Valentine's Day." So I went for a quilted and embellished tote. I kept thinking about what love means to me as I worked on it. Here's the finished tote. Although I was tempted to embellish with beads and pins, I got sick and only felt well enough to do a little stitching every night. As I worked I thought about how often love seems disappointing to us, especially when it fails to live up to our expectations. But now that I've experienced love in many forms, I can say that it's made me a better person than I might have been without it. Love is a precious thing, and should be appreciated in all its forms. I am very grateful for the love of my guy, my child and my friends who have stuck with me all these years. That's you two, in case you're wondering. :) Also finally found something to do with a ve...

Progress

My guy is back home safe, sound and exhausted. I think he just realized he's over seventy now. :) I didn't finish a sewing project while he was gone, but I did make some progress on the beach bag. I've tacked down all the fabric elements on top of the old backing fabric I quilted. Time to break out the embroidery thread box and have some fun.

Valerean

Search This Blog