When Nothing Goes As Planned...

Well, I suppose that everyone with pets (or, probably kids) knows that things don't always go the way you like.  My kitty managed to shall we say... stain... my quilt that was on my bed Saturday morning.  Of course, hubby and I were on our way out so I was rushing around trying to treat the stain before leaving for the day.  So I grabbed some Shout gel, treated the stain, and tossed it in the washer to soak, but Pregnancy Brain struck and I completely forgot to add a Color Catcher.  Yeah....

 

See that nice blue floral fabric... it should be white.  My first thought (at 9:30 at night when I opened the washer and discovered this) was that the cheap navy fabric had bled, but in the light of day I realized it was the floral fabric.  While that fabric was also from Joanns, it was the only designer fabric in the whole quilt!  A Denyse Schmidt print that I absolutely love (or, at the moment, loved, past tense). 

With this discovery I did what any reasonalbe, modern quilter would do- I googled, looking for blogs where people had had similar issues and how they solved them.  The next morning, I started my quest to salvage the quilt.

 

My salvage tools- (lots and lots of) Color Catchers, Oxiclean, and pins (because I read that pinning the color catchers on can lead to even better results).

 

 

50 (yes, 50) color catchers, 98% of a bottle of Oxiclean, countless pins, and 3+ hours later, I was ready to give this another go in the machine and hope for the best. 

 

I put it on a Soak cycle, but that turned out to only be 30 minutes and did absolutely nothing from what I could see.  So the quilt is now soaking in the machine until I decide to push the button and turn it back on.  It has been about an hour and a half now and I think the water is ever so slightly tinted blue (but that could just be wishful thinking).  I used cold water since that is what I always use (and what it soaked in yesterday that lead to this), but maybe in another few hours I will let it drain and refill with hot water and hope that works better. 

 

Any other ideas if this doesn't work?  Sadly, this is the only big quilt (aka queen bed sized) that I have made.  There are matching pillow shams and matching throw pillows.  It has some florals in it, but the fabrics are manly enough that my husband doesn't mind it.  I'll be so sad if I ruined it!  Why oh why did I not just spot treat the stain instead of soaking the whole quilt!?!?

 

UPDATE: I did take the quilt out and refill the machine with hot water.  I let it soak overnight and then took it out, the water was blueish, the Color Catchers were blueish... and the quilt was still blueish.  Ugh.  I had grabbed some Syntrapol from the local quilt shop, so that was the next try.  Washing in Syntrapol like the directions said... no change.  Next up was an entire bottle of Shout plus a Syntrapol soak and more Color Catchers.  The quilt still has a blue tint on those blocks, but I have officially given up.  The quilt is back on my bed and I am just living with it for now.  About the only good thing I can say is that the blue stayed on those blocks and didn't tint the entire quilt.  So to the untrained eye, I think it looks fine- I am the only one who knows what is wrong with it.