I made this cloth in 1979, and eventually gave it to my then sister-in-law. It came back into my hands recently, badly discolored from cigarette smoke, and with a couple of stains apparently from spills. There is also some damage from broken threads. Some of these areas had been stitched firmly up with sewing thread, which has kept the damage from spreading, but doesn’t look very good.

Photos:
1 & 2: Starting condition. White notepad for color comparison.
3: old photo of the original cloth being blocked
4: After hand washing, binding up the broken areas in preparation for machine washing
5: bagged for the washing machine
6: out of the washer: much discoloration removed but not all.
7: one hour in Oxiclean, still discolored. This photo shows the spill stains.
8: after the Oxiclean soak and another machine wash. Smoke stains pretty much gone though spill stains are still visible.

By the way, I would NEVER have treated an antique or family heirloom as rudely as I have treated this. Of course my family considers it an heirloom, but as we know a prophet is without honor in his own country, and an artifact in the hands of its maker!

Here are the steps I took:

1. Carefully examined the entire cloth to find and stabilize any damaged areas. Several holes had been whipstitched by the owner, and this prevented further runs but was not pretty. In the other areas I carefully ran a (beige) sewing thread around each broken area, making sure I threaded through every open loop that would lead to a run. After tying those threads off, I then whipstitched the whole area shut so that it would not be affected by stretching and pulling on the cloth during washing.
2. I submerged the cloth in a bucket of clean water and soaked it for several hours then squeezed the water out. This removed a lot of the residual smoke--the water was brown. I then soaked in water with a few drops of dish detergent. This might have removed some more of the stains, I couldn’t tell. Photo 4 was taken at that point.
3. I intended to try Oxiclean, which I have seen work miracles but first I wanted to try a more thorough washing, so I put the cloth in a mesh bag and washed it in the washing machine. Oh, yes I did. Front loader (so no agitator), gentle cycle, cold water, half amount of unscented detergent. This doesn’t seem to have done much more than the hand washing--which is good, because it means hand washing is probably adequate!
4. On to the Oxiclean. I used the soaking formula on the label: 4 scoops in 2 gallons of warm water, stirred until completely dissolved, soaked the cloth for 5 hours (until I could no longer see the discoloration). This seems to have done the job.
5. I then machine washed again to remove the residue of the Oxiclean.

Now: to decide how much repair or restoration I want to attempt. Here’s the difference: A repair would involve stabilizing the edges of the lesions so that no more running can occur, and somehow filling in the space. Restoration would be to try to recreate the exact stitch patterns in the damaged areas: in this case I have a better chance than some projects because I have the charts and the original thread it was made in.