Is Your Fabric Crocking?

Do you know what “crocking” is?

Most of us probably think about slow cookers or wearing plastic waterproof clogs, but “crocking” is actually a term quilters should learn.

You know how sometimes you buy new fabric and you notice that some of the ink has lightly stained your fingers while working with it? That’s crocking – the transfer of color due to rubbing or abrasion.

If you have prewashed your quilting fabrics, hopefully you won’t have to worry about any crocking from your quilt pieces. It  is still a good idea to pretest for crocking, though.

Why?

What if you have a dark color next to a light color in your quilt and the dark color tends to crock? The entire quilt is at risk anytime it’s folded or rolled. If rubbing the light and dark colors against each other causes smudging, your quilt won’t look good for long.

Dark colors naturally crock more than others. It makes sense because the dark colors have more saturated ink in them to achieve their darkness.

Testing for crocking is actually very easy. It’s as simple as rubbing the fabric.

There are two different tests for crocking – a wet version and a dry one. Both require a small piece of white cotton fabric.

For the wet test, dampen a small piece of white fabric. Wrap it around your finger and rub the fabric in question. Rub on the bias rather than against it for best results.

The dry test is the same, except don’t wet the white fabric.

It’s helpful to know the level of crocking before you spend time quilting. If your fabric continues to crock after prewashing, it will continue to lose color with wear. It might smudge when folded and stored if there is a lot of crocking during your dry test. If the crocking occurs in the wet test, the fabric will continue to lose color with each washing.

In either case, if your fabric crocks - don't put it in a quilt! You'll be very sad a few years after the quilt is made when the color disappears.

Which fabrics should you be wary of?

Dark fabrics, naturally. They are saturated with more ink or dye to begin with but the extra will generally wash out when pre-washed.

Printed fabrics tend to demonstrate more crocking than dyed ones. When fabric is dyed, it goes through the fibers. Some might wash out, but for the most part, once the dye permeates the fabric, it latches onto individual fibers.

Printed fabrics, however, are printed on the top side of a fabric. You can certainly see the difference. When you look at the back side of a printed fabric, it will be as though you are looking at the back side of a page printed from your desktop ink jet printer. All the ink will be on one side, but you will be able to see the image from the back side. The back side of the fabric will be lighter in color than the printed side.

How do you avoid crocking?

If you can use dyed fabrics rather than printed ones, you can eliminate some worry since they naturally crock less. However, most of us don’t want to give up the variety of prints available for our quilt projects!

Lean toward lighter colors. Instead of going with a super dark fabric, challenge yourself to find color-rich looking fabrics that are not so dark. Experiment with colors to find new looks that you like.

Test it in the store. Take some white fabric scraps with you when you go shopping for fabric. Five-inch squares are easy to carry and are a good size for this test.  Simply rub the white square onto the fabric to do the dry test.

Keep in mind that the in-store fabric is not pre-washed so you will likely see a little more crocking than you would after washing the fabric at home.

© 2010-, Penny Halgren. This article courtesy of http://www.How-To-Quilt.com. You may freely reprint this article on your website or in your newsletter provided this courtesy notice and the author name and URL remain intact.