Saturday, August 30, 2008

AH! My fabric turned pink!

When I washed all of my fabric yesterday, the red I washed bled onto the frog fabric I got. It was mostly dark and it was just the tummies of the frogs and some patterns in the background that were white. Funny thing was that there were other fabrics being washed in the same batch that had white on them, but they didn't absorb any of the red.

Luckily, I have experienced pink fabric before when Jon washed his red/white quilt that I made for him for Christmas before we got married.
So in case you ever have things that have turned pink, this is what you do.

Put hot water in the sink. Add any number of combination of laundry detergent, color safe bleach, oxy clean, and powdered dishwasher soap. I usually risk my hands and put them in the super hot water and wring and dip repeatedly. I've also used a spoon to stir it around while I wait for the water to cool a bit.
It takes a LOT of wringing and dipping, but it draws out a LOT of the red. You may have to change water several times. Put hot water and all of the detergents in each time you change the water and repeat the wringing and dipping.
You can also let it sit for a while. I let my fabric sit in hot water and detergents overnight and it did pretty well.

My fabric is now back to it's mostly white state. It may always have a slight tint of pink, but at least it's better than REALLY pink. And it may come out even more if I worked it more.

So there you have it. Hopefully you never have to worry about bleeding red fabric turning things pink, but if you do- try my method. I'm 2 for 2.

2 Comments:

Kathy Lee said...

That's awesome, I love learning new stain removing tricks! I've have successfully removed MUSTARD stains from Mike's white shirt using an awesome all purpose cleaner. I am amazed at our brilliance sometimes when it comes to stain removal ;)

whitney said...

Ahhh, I just had that happen to me (for the first time ever, actually). I soaked the now-pink items in hot Oxy-clean for like a week, but no dice :P Glad you had better luck!