Quilts that are washed sometimes look a bit different. Is it worth it to wash a quilt that is 'new'? (You risk slight colour changes or warping/wrinkling in un-quilted areas.) Not always, but sometimes it becomes a genuine necessity. Especially when a quilt has been handled a lot or has been worked on over a large expanse of time. My example is the 2019 World Quilt Exhibition entry mentioned last blog. The quilt was carefully handled, packed up between quilting sessions but -in fact- had been in progress for many years and even with all the care I could give it couldn't possibly be clean. We lived in five different houses between the beginning and end of this quilt. (We do move around a bit so that's no surprise really) The point is that no matter how much you take care of a quilt, in reality it might need to be washed. This quilt did not LOOK dirty, or smell. I was just painfully aware of how many hours I quilted, and how many times it had been out then packed away. (How many years it had been unwashed.) To wash such a huge thing first a large bath was filled with tepid water then a colour safe soap was added. THEN the quilt was added. It was a huge shock to realize how much dust had landed on this baby over the years. Three rinses saw the water clear. Yikes! In case you are wondering, the discoloration in the water was not dye, when the tub was drained the first time, there was a layer of wet dust stuck to the tub. The moral of this story is to consider washing any quilt that hasn't been washed in years, even if it looks/smells good.
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