I had my Friday night all planned. I was relaxing with a glass of wine after dinner. I had borrowed ” Saving Mr Banks” from the library that day . Although it came out a few years ago I had not seen it so I was looking forward to watching it. I love anything that Tom Hanks does and this looked good. And of course I planned on doing some hand quilting while watching the movie, after I had finished the wine.
I reached for my glass of wine and….knocked it over , it spilled into the bag where I am keeping my hand pieced Grandmothers Flower garden quilt.
Most of the full glass of wine went into the bag, a bit hit the carpet but the quilt absorbed most of it. My heart nearly stopped.
I grabbed the bag, moved to the dining room away from the carpet and took out the quilt. The wine was everywhere! Sorry no photos of the wine soaked quilt… I was not thinking only reacting!
I put it in the bathtub to soak with Dawn dish detergent. I did not know what else to do but knew that I could not let the red wine dry. A quick internet search suggested Oxy Clean. My husband had cleaned the carpet while I was soaking the quilt and drove me to the store to get some Oxy Clean.
I let the quilt soak for about 2 hours and the good news is that the red wine is gone. I was nervous about putting the quilt in the washing machine but really had no choice as it is a queen size quilt. I used a gentle cycle and gentle spin to get the water out and spread it out on the basement floor to dry overnight.
The batting did shred a bit on the edges but as I had left extra and had machine basted the quilt it will be fine.
Lesson learned …I will be extra careful not to have any liquids around this quilt. The top took me about a year to hand piece and I am nearly two thirds done hand quilting around the flowers . All the flowers were made from scraps and there are no repeat flowers only repeat centers and stones in the path.
Not quite the way I wanted to spend my Friday night. We saved the movie until Saturday night and thoroughly enjoyed it.
Linking up to Oh Scrap at Quilting is more Fun than Housework
A Passion for Purple 
OMG, I would DIE!!! So glad you were able to save the day! Lost the evening, but worth it in the end. I ahven’t seen that movie either, so will add it to my list. This quilt is just jaw-dropping already. It will be stupendous when done.
I had something similar happen with a table runner at Christmas. I didn’t occur to me to soak it in Oxy Clean. I wonder if it’s too late! I might just try it anyway. So glad your beautiful, hand pieced quilt survived!
Oh my! I am happy that you were able to save the quilt. It is beautiful! Thanks for sharing with Oh Scrap!
This was not the project that I was planning on sharing… It just became the feature project…maybe it wanted some attention…lol
It’s a good thing you have a strong heart. I think that would have done me in. Thank goodness it came out.
So none of the fabric bled after being treated with Dawn and OxyClean? (That’s always my fear … and my experience.) Thank heavens! I held my breath reading this post until I got to the happy ending. : )
Hi Michelle
I have used blue dawn on batik quilts in the past and it seemed to prevent the extra dye from running on the quilt. I was nervous about the oxy clean but at that point I had nothing to lose. I do have some faint running of dye by some of the batik hexies. Once it’s done I am going to soak it in dawn again. I only had mountain fresh dawn and I don’t think it is as good as the blue dawn.There was also the thought at the time that I would dye the quilt pink…glad I didn’t have to go that route!