Originally Posted by Pam H
I bought 2 1/2" strips from Keepsake Quilting. Should I prewash these before sewing them onto a sweatshirt that will soon be a jacket. I will be totally covering the sweatshirt with fabric.
The strips are all shades of blue batiks from very dark to very light.
Sounds pretty!
Since sweatshirts often shrink much more dramatically than woven cottons, I'd pre-wash the sweatshirt.
For the strips, I'd just lay them out on my drying rack, use a mister bottle full of hot water to thoroughly dampen them and then let them air dry. That should let them do any shrinking they're going to do without risking any fraying.
With batiks, most of the shrinkage that happens is due to the machinery that folds the yardage, then winds them onto the bolts. It only takes some dampening to let the fabric relax back to its original size.