A lesson to us all.

A few weeks ago I made a quilt which was going to be given as a Christmas gift.  I decided on the Ohio star pattern and as it was a gift quilt I would do it in all different Christmas fabric. I carefully washed all my chosen fabric, cut and pieced them together and spent ages laying it all out on the floor to decide how all the blocks went together.

I had bought some of the new fusible batting and carefully ironed it all together with the nice cheery red fabric, I then quilted it very simply with big diagonal crosses as I did not yet have either a walking foot or a darning foot.  I then bought some lovely green material to bind it and spent two evenings carefully hand sewing the binding down.  I was so pleased with the finished result as it was really effective as you can see here.

Once it was all finished I took the pictures and then remembered I have to wash it to rid it of the temporary adhesive which makes the batting fusible. Into the washing machine it went.  You can guess what happened, indeed I had carefully washed all the fabric that made the quilt top, but I forgot to wash the backing fabric, so my beautiful quilt looks like this.

I have since washed it three times with various colour catchers and colour removers and it still has a distinctive pinkness to it.  K loves it and has claimed it as her own, and happily wraps her self up in it in the living room.  I have just chalked it up to experience.  I washed another quilt during the week and anxiously waited to see if it was okay and it was fine.  I have gone right off bright red as a backing colour!