My sister & I did the starch method many years ago & loved the final results. Her fabric was rather light-weight & since we worried about it stretching, we used some iron-on Pellon & then trimmed off the selvage edges (the iron-on sealed the eges nicely & everything came out fine. We stitched together the side seams only at one place where we didn't want to chance the starch coming loose, but it probably wasn't necessary. A few years later, she took it down, washed it & used the fabric for something else.