Jeanette Frantz

Another reason I prewash my fabric is that I am asthmatic, and some things really precipitate asthma attacks or episodes. Another reason is that my immune system is somewhat impaired by virtue of a battle against MRSA and a severe episode of pneumonia. I can no longer use perfume or cologne of any kind. PLUS, my cousin has a quilt shop in Oklahoma, and she has had adult women she's caught wiping their noses on fabric in her shop. Of course, she has had to pull that fabric off the shelves as not saleable. Hers is a very small shop, and she doesn't have the luxury of returning such fabric to her suppliers. She has to absorb the loss. To get back to my primary reason for prewashing my fabric, I cannot afford not to prewash for health reasons -- my health! It is almost impossible to watch every person who comes into a fabric shop -- you never know what contagious diseases people could be carrying, and what could be passed by other people handling the fabric, and then me working with unwashed fabric. Two years ago I might not have been that particular. I can't be sure that there was any connection between fabric and my pneumonia, but I was critically ill and I refuse to take any more risks than are absolutely necessary. Jeanette