Gee's Bend Rehabilitation -- Of Sorts

Since this seems to be the season for finishing half-done projects, I got out that Gee's Bend "Medallion Variation" kit that gave me so much grief a year ago, before I've even cut the fabrics.  Every so often at day camp last week, I spread out our three little quilts and thought, "Wouldn't have been nice to have that big Gee's Bend thing?"  Yesterday I dug it out of the drawer and realized that it was decision time -- either it gets made, or tossed in the scrap stash.

I washed the red fabric with a white cloth, which came out pink, so I put it in the sink with a kettle-full of boiling water and it still bled --

Then I gave up and tossed all of the fabrics, red one too, into the washing-machine together.  I figured that either it would be (miraculously) all right, or I would see exactly what the red would do to the other colors if/when made into a quilt. 

Well, it was actually not too bad, considering.

So, to recap, these were the fabrics before washing,

then after washing twice separately, for all except the red, which was washed numerous times by itself,

and as they currently stand, the red after washing innumerably more times violently, and then one last time with all of the fabrics together.  The colors are not quite true-to-life here, as in fact I could not for a while tell the light blue (upper left corner) from the lilac (center) in person.

I'm not sure how Windham can say with a straight face, "while the dark colors were just a bit changed [after washing], we found them a bit brighter and even more appealing".  All right, the dark colors are -- except for the red -- more-or-less unchanged, but the light colors are noticeably faded and altered, especially the poor light-blue.

So I will start making up the quilt.  I am not so far especially impressed with the fabrics, either the color-fastness or simply the feel of them, which is a little stiff and canvassy, despite being light-weight, and, in the case of the three lightest colors, rather sheer.  All in all, I think it unlikely that I would buy this fabric again. 

Wish me luck ...