Silver Needle

I am for prewashing everything. This is how I handle precuts with very little fraying or stretching. I have a wood drying rack for clothes. I put like colors together (no more than 1/4 - 1/3 of the jelly roll) in a sink of straight hot water with the proper amount of "Retayne". With a plastic spatula I press up and down on the unrolled strips and gently swish them a little. Let them sit 5 - 10 minutes. Then I keep rinsing with repeated sinks full of straight hot water until the rinse water is clear. Usually 2-3 sink fullls. A few at a time I take them out of the sink and put them into a salad spinner and spin most of the water out. Then I gently untangle them and hang them over the rungs of the clothes rack side by side without overlapping. Let them get almost dry and press dry with a dry iron or press them with Best Press or similar product. Sounds like a lot of work but I have no worries about the darker colors bleeding into lighter on a finished quilt. I do the same thing with fat quarters and all other precuts. A hint on the clothes rack. I bought some plastic tubing about the same size as the rungs. Then I cut a slit in the tubing and snapped it over the rungs. Any excess dark dye will not go into the wood and leach out later to ruin something light. I just wipe off the plastic covered rungs after each use.