glassbird

My sister recently asked me to sew together, and then hem, a large piece of quilting cotton to make a table cloth for her sales table at several upcoming craft shows. (She makes some really marvelous glass items with a flaming torch.)

She pre-washed it, and dried it, and I sewed as directed. All is well there, but it's debut at her first craft show today was marred by an astonishing amount of fuzz and threads (and downright lint) accumulating on the front section where people were brushing against it as they looked at her items.

Some of it was identifiable as yarn fuzz from a nearby table selling hand spun yarn. But the rest of it was just stuff leaping off of the crowd, and embedding itself in her table cloth! We are thinking that the cloth is overly prone to static somehow. She had to walk around the front of the table and pick it clean several times!

Is there a trick to prevent this? Fabric softener? Isn't there an anti-static spray available? I seem to have some memory of something like that, but does it really work? Ideally something with out a strong smell, as she is sensitive to such things.

Any suggestions will be mightily appreciated!