Removal Of The Red Dye

Thank you to everyone who gave me suggestions about how to remove the color bleed from my hand dyed thread - especially all of the knowledgeable women from the quiltart list. I tried several of the suggestions with limited results. I then found Carbona Color Remover (thanks Wheat). I probably should have tested it first in a small area, but my MO is to just forge ahead and hope for the best.

I wish I could show you the entire piece but it's for a challenge and I don't want my quilt group to see it until our big unveiling. My first problem with treating the piece was that it's in mid-construction. This is only one section and it is not a complete quilt sandwich yet. The piece is quilted and embellished and the backing is to be put on later. So this eliminated the use of the washing machine.

So I decided to try the Carbona with a dye catcher. I followed the directions on the box of Carbona, filled up the sink with water, dissolved the powder and added the dye catcher. As I lowered my piece into the sink, many changes took place. It did remove the red dye that ran from the background fabric. Whoopee! But it also unexpectedly removed some color from the other fabrics. The bad news is that almost immediately I could see that it was removing the blue color from my sky. Check out the before and after. The original blue fabric is on the right. So now I'll have to come up with a Plan B for the sky. But a bonus was that although it changed the green color of the grass, some gold appeared. The original fabric before treatment is on the top. That's good news to me, because it's a panel for an Autumn scene.

So now to get the blue back into the sky .......