and makes my eyes and nose run and my chest tighten up

Sounds like you have a reliable early warning system!

It's also used in all those air freshners and in some pressure treated, pressed lumber/wood/furniture. It's nasty stuff & I didn't realize it was in new fabrics. Lovely. Just more incentive for me to wash them asap once I get them home.

and then we can wonder what's in the detergents/washing/laundry products we use.

My son can't tolerate having the fabric softeners used in the dryer with his underwear.

I wash and press new fabric as soon as I get it and starch just before cutting. I feel it cuts and sews more cleanly somehow. Regarding using different qualities or 'weights' of fabric in the same quilt, for me it would depend on how much wear it would get and how special it was. In an ideal world, the fabric should be the same weight and quality because the weaker fabric will show wear. I think maybe even the stronger fabric adjacent to it MAKES it wear more quickly if that makes sense; but as i said, 'in an ideal world' and sometimes rules are broken and no harm is done. :D

I think when one does as well as one can
with what one knows at the time
with the best that one has to work with at the time -

that's as good as it's going to be for that time and place.

It's the "widow's mite" kind of thinking -

Here here! It's just the more I learn, the more I realise I NEED to learn! :shock: :lol:

Amen!!

That is SOOO true!

And it only gets worse the more you learn! :lol: