Do you prewash your fabric?
I do! I am terrified of fabric colors running into each other in my finished quilt after I've done hours and hours of stitching and even more hours and hours of hand quilting. Any piece of fabric F8 or larger gets prewashed before it EVER gets to meet my stash. So, guess what I did today... I prewashed!
I guess I don't really have to prewash white/neutral fabrics, but if everything else is prewashed, I feel like I should do these too so that they are not the only fabrics in the quilt with shrinkage.
As the fabric comes out of the dryer, I always trim up the edges (cutting off all the strings) and hand press (I don't bother ironing yet - these fabrics may stay in my stash for a while before being used). Can you believe the pile of strings that come off of just 3 yards and 10 FQs?
Up next was the blue/purple/green batch washed with a color catcher. 1 yard and 20 FQs here. Not much dye came off of these. But...
...check this out! Reds ALWAYS bleed in the wash. Just look at that color catcher! This was 1 yard of red backing fabric and 10 brown FQs. I love color catchers!
And, before I give the quilt away or put it in my cabinet for use cuddling on the couch at home (see my avatar above - that's the cabinet!), I always give my quilts one good wash with a color catcher. I would hate to have the recipient of any quilt have colors bleed in the wash, feel bad about it and/or not know what to do! Just my thinking!
What do you do?
Yes. Red always bleeds. I prewash and my friends roll their eyes. However, going through scraps that are unwashed seemed more tedious. Mine that were in stacks having been previously washed and ironed were not so unruly. Really surprised me. It took me much longer to sort through and manage their cuttings. There is so much distortion cutting unwashed strips or pieces for 192 four inch sawtooth stars. Won't be using their unwashed scraps again, that is for sure.
ReplyDeleteSometimes I do, sometimes I don't. I have found tho that if I clip a small triangle off the corners before washing, I don't get all the strings. I don't really lose fabric as I would be cutting the ends to square up the fabric anyways.
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