I volunteer at a resale shop whose proceeds go to our local food bank. Occasionally, some of the donated items aren’t so savory and thus gets tossed to the “freebie” bins that reside by the dumpsters for anyone that’s interested. One such piece that was headed there was an incredibly lovely quilt. The only problem with it? It has several stains all over it that look like either someone had one too many accidents or couldn’t hold their caffeinated beverages. Very sad.
However, I was allowed to salvage it. And, due to something I remembered from many moons ago, I’d rather change the overall color (white) to mask the stains rather than necessarily keep it pristine and get them out. What I vaguely recall to do, was somehow steep it in either coffee or tea to make it that really pretty antique-y look. So, anyone know what I’m talking about? Better yet, how to go about it?
My limited experience with dyeing leads me to believe that, unfortunately, it doesn’t work to mask stains very well. The stained parts are still a different color than the overall piece. Maybe if you went darker than coffee or tea would go.
I tried using tea to dye a white cotton bag with some stains on it. It just made the stains more obvious and the whole thing look dirty.
For your quilt, I would try a stain remover product, like shout, and/or try bleaching it. You’re either going to get it clean enough to use or totally ruin it, but given that it’s been rescued from the garbage, it’s worth a shot to save it, but no great loss if you can’t.
Before doing anything else, I’d see whether I could remove or minimize the stains, but I’d use something lots gentler than (chlorine) bleach - peroxide or OxyClean would be my first choice, without researching. But here’s a more knowledgeable person’s take on stained quilts: link.
Dying it won’t work, unless you can get dark enough that you can’t see details, and that level of color depth is really difficult to achieve with home dying and on large items. It will most likely look awful. (sorry)
Is this an actual “quilt” quilt - like with individual pieces/blocks and fancy stitching and etc? If so, it might be valuable. Take it by your history museum and ask if their fabric historian can take a look at it. Do this BEFORE you wash it - old quilts aren’t always made with colorfast materials.
If it’s just a blanket/coverlet/duvet sort of thing, then totally go at it with some stain-fighters.
My order of operations
Wash in warm water, rinse in warm water, with dreft or some other really gentle laundry soap. GENTLE CYCLE. After washing, look at it while it’s still wet and see if the stains are lessened - do NOT dry it in the dryer.
Still stained?
2) Salt and Vinegar spot treatment. (works for anything, but especially rust, grease, mildew, coffee/tea) Equal parts vinegar and water, enough salt to make that a paste, paint it onto the stains and let sit - 30 minutes to overnight depending on the darkness of the stain. If you do several hours to overnight, you might have to wash the whole quilt with vinegar to brighten the rest of the white fabric up. Again, don’t dry it unless the stains are totally gone.
Still stained?
3) Wash with oxyclean - (sodium percarbonate - a good general cleaner/stain remover) Lots of oxyclean, lots of hot water. If it lightens the stains up a bit after a straight wash, then run a wash and interrupt it while it’s agitating - leave it to soak for a few hours to overnight, then finish the cycle with a HOT rinse. Again, no drying unless stains are gone.
Still stained? You might be out of luck
4) Bleach the sucker. Plain old bleach, follow the directions for your washer, and cross your fingers. DON’T bleach more than twice - it ruins the fibers.
It’s a quilt so I’d just locate some old cloth that I like, and use that and to just appliqué over the top of the stained bits, by hand, or on my machine!
Wow. Lots of good advice. To give a little more information, the stains are intermingled amongst fabric that’s got a red flowery pattern in parts and a relief of people in others, but not. Similar to cabbage roses for the former and those fabrics that had historical looking women and men (usually in cornflower blue) back during when early Americana was popular (50s?) for the latter. So, the stains don’t really show much. When I first saw there were throwing it out, I didn’t immediately see why.
And yes, it’s a quilt quilt. Pieced together, but I’m not sure if it’s by hand (could be) or machine (doesn’t look that old or dated). Regardless, it sounds like the tea idea is a bad one. I suppose I’ll be foregoing that then.
However, I had already decided I’d probably need to try and do something with the stains first anyway. Therefore, I’ll definitely be attempting the steps that Lasciel lays out, especially since I’d like to keep it pretty much as is without more embellishments (unless I have to). That’ll probably be sometime over the weekend, but once I’m done, I’ll report back and let y’all know how it turned out.
Thanks everyone so much for the help. I really appreciate it.
Enzymes may work on simple biological (food and body fluids and mould.) stains.
Oxygen bleach are then the next strength of attack but may fade the dye/print if left for hours.
Chlorine bleach always attacks the dye in cotton and other organic fibres, only use on whites.