I washed a very old quilt

Today I had a day at home to take the time and wash a very old quilt.  This quilt was made in the 1940s.  It's the Diamond Hexagon quilt.

I finished the quilt a while ago, but didn't have the time to wash it.  With very old quilts 70 to 80 years old you have the day to day accumulation of dust and dirt that has made its way into the fibre of the materials.  However, the worst enemy is the fabric dye fastness.  In other words the worry is that the dye colour will run.

A lot of the older fabrics were still not stable during those times.  Their dye ran constantly.   Even now we have some manufactures who may have a particular line of fabric that is not colour fastness.  Most of the time, now a days, you would more so worry about a red colour.  Of any of the colours, red seems to be the one that you really want to test out, before you use it.

The picture above is of the quilt, before I washed it.  I laid the top white hexagon row on top of the backing fabric.  Of the two rows of hexagons laying side by side, the left hand side is the newer fabric of the backing and the right hand side is the older fabrics of the top of the quilt.

By the time I am done washing the quilt, I am aiming for the top fabrics to be almost as bright as the backing "off white" fabric.

Above is the clean bathtub water with a T.S.A. soap in the water.  The T.S.A. soap is to help the fastness of the colour dye and help set the dye.  When I use this particular soap, I am hoping to remove the excess dye from the fabrics and set the dye, to prevent any further running of the dye colour.

As you can see with the first wash, we removed most of the dust and dirt, and a lot of the excess dye.  I continued to wash the quilt a few more times, until the water ran clear.  I proceeded to rinsed the quilt a few more times, trying to get all the T.S.A. soap out of the fabric.

By the time I finished washing the quilt, you could see the colour of the fabrics through the off white backing material, however it was only the yellow fabric that dyed through.  At this point, I decided to treat the yellow fabric with a stain remover and wash the quilt once more.

I am grateful that it is only the yellow fabric, that has dyed the quilt!  Now, I have to cross my fingers that during the drying time, while the fabrics are still wet, that some of the other colours don't choose to dye too.