Originally Posted by
nativetexan
it is stunning!!! you don't really have to "wash" your quilts unless they are really dirty. soak it and spin out. refill and soak again and spin. done!
This is true, I wanted to wash it to get rid of the blue markings that I put on the back of each piece. As you can imagine, this was a complicated quilt, so I wrote a number to correspond with the wedge, a letter to denote which piece. The blue markings showed through on the palest colors. I've used those blue markers a million times on quilt tops, but I forgot that heat sets the blue (with paperless piecing there is a lot of ironing). So, even though I washed the quilt 2 times, the blue marker shows a bit. Oh well, life goes on.
Also, with the wool batting, I heard that if you wash the quilt, the unquilted parts look like you've done trapunto.