I have been starching faithfully since I first saw it mentioned in a tutorial somewhere and would never want to do without it. I was just remembering a desperate situation a friend of mine ran into many years ago. Someone, learning that she could sew, had asked her to make a skirt from a very easy pattern. She said "Sure", thinking "How hard could that be?" She found out that it could be very hard indeed because the woman picked a light, sheer, filmy, slick, stretchy, fraying fabric - your worst nightmare. I now know that very likely the solution to the problem (which none of her sewing friends came up with at the time) might have been to starch the heck out of it.