I love starch. I use whatever I can find, usually either Niagra or Faultless if I buy it locally. I prefer my fabric to be pretty stiff when I cut it and also when I stitch. I've never had a problem with bugs getting in my starched stash. I've recently found that you can still buy Staflo gallons from Walmart.com and also Amazon.com. For some reason they can't be found locally anymore. What I like about Staflo is you can mix it up to whatever strength you want and either use a spray bottle, or dip your fabric to starch.
When I was growing up we used a Coca-Cola bottle with a cork stopper that had one of those pot metal sprinkler heads in it to hold our home made starch mixture. When it was time to iron we sprinkled the starch on and then ironed/pressed. Of course, we didn't have a steam iron so if we wanted to use steam, we had another bottle (Pepsi I think) with the same kind of stopper/sprinkler that just held water, sprinkled it on and then "steam-ironed" LOL.
Rob