Product Review: Shout color catchers

I am a mom with two kids, which means I have a lot of laundry to do.  And because I have so much laundry occasionally a little black pair of leggings sneaks its way into the brights leaving me with a heaping pile of shirts with black splotches.  Or more often than not, I will buy my daughter some cute little black and white outfit and as soon as I wash it, it becomes a black and grey outfit.  So when I saw the ads for the Shout Color Catcher I was intrigued.

BRAND NEW, NEVER BEEN Washed fabric.

As it happened I got a great new sewing pattern and bought some materials for it.  Black, red and white.  Now if you know about sewing, you know that fabrics have to be washed first.  Yipee! I got to test out my new color catcher sheets!  (When you're a work at home mom it doesn't take much to get you excited) So I tossed my black, red and white materials into the wash machine with 2 color catcher sheets.  For colors that are more likely to bleed the package recommends using 2-3 sheets for the first wash.  Seems reasonable as red and black do tend to bleed most during their initial wash.  So I set the washer to cold water, tossed everything in and crossed my fingers.

About 30 minutes later the timer went off on the wash machine so I eagerly went to examine the results.  As I pulled out the pieces I was impressed.  There was a small amount of bleeding from the black flowers into the red flowers.  This may have been remedies by using 3 sheets instead of 2.  Here is the after shot:

Looks pretty good right?  So their tag line is "The proof is on the sheet." So I took a picture of my two used sheets next to a brand new sheet.  The proof was indeed on the Sheet, but more importantly, the proof was in my fabrics!  I never would have thought that I could safely wash brand new black, red and white fabrics together.  Shout Color Catchers definitely work, however if you are washing 'high bleed' fabrics for the first time I would recommend using 3 sheets.  I probably won't be throwing my blacks in with my brights or whites any time soon.  However for those fabrics that are black and white, black and red, or any combination there of where I am concerned about a color bleed ruining the outfit, the Shout Color Catcher will be part of my laundry tool kit!