I just finished a fairly large rag quilt, ran it through the washer and dryer twice at the laundromat, shook it as well as I could, and brought it home. Well, it STILL had lots of tiny wisps of threads all over, and the hand-vacuum wouldn't pick them up. However, I happened to see the thing I use to pick pet hair off the furniture, thought "why not?", and IT WORKED! It is one of those hand-held side to side things that Pledge has been advertising -- two half-rollers of velcro- like stuff that picks up hair and puts it into the clear handle. It took less than 10 minutes to whisk the thing very lightly all over the front and back of the quilt, and did a superb job! I was very impressed, and decided to share the news with everybody.
As to those little treasures by Pledge, they sell for between $6 and $8 at the stores, and are designed to be used until the handle fills up and then be thrown away. Being a cheapskate, I decided once it was full to see whether I could empty it without destroying it -- it was a throw-away item anyway, right? Well, I got out a dinner knife, poked and prodded at one end of the rollers, and found I could wedge the knife in the end, stretch the handle part just a bit, and lift the rollers out far enough to stick a couple of fingers inside and grab the mass of pet hair out. Then I pushed the rollers back in place to close it up, and it worked again! I'm sure that at some point the plastic will break and the thing will be ruined, but so far I have emptied the silly thing 4 times. And what a handy way to get rid of all those little bitty threads that seem to go everywhere and stick to everything!