Case of the Disappearing Gnomes...

Oh no! I can't look! Tell me it isn't happening???

Let me preface this by saying I love me some Heather Ross fabric. When I see it somewhere, be it West Hill, or Mendocino, or pajamas, I just buy a little more because you can't have too much wonderful. So when Heather announced she was designing a few more prints thru Spoonflower, I popped in immediately and bought some gnomes, some toadstools, some deep raisin colors, a neutral version and some plums. It just arrived two days ago and I tore into it, stroked it and put it in the stockpile---I mean cache, um stash, feeling just a little bit smug.

I happened across this in a flickr group yesterday...Mrs.McPorkchop linked to another photo here.

Seems the deepest colors aren't holding up in the wash!

I remember my very clever sister-in-law advising me to add a bit of vinegar in the wash to prevent the colors from bleeding. And don't you use it when dying easter eggs?

Worth a shot. So first I hand washed the swatches in Target's Method detergent and about 1/4 cup of vinegar, I let it dry and snapped these two pictures.

Really no fading on the toadstools and maybe very slightly on that raisin color. I thought I'd throw it in the wash and then dry it the second time to see if the vinegar had helped at all.

Well, as you can see, my results are about the same as the ladies' on flickr (top pic).

Hmmm. This is such pricey fabric, I hated sacrificing even the tiny swatches for this test.

Guess it's time to contact spoonflower. I'll let you know how it goes.