I'd like to hear more experienced ladies/men have to say on this topic..........I wash EVERYTHING I get. Though I have read here before that it is cheaper to make your own strips than to buy jelly rolls. And that's logical. You buy a yard or so and wash that baby good, then you cut it up into strips or perhaps just a strip or two off each fabric that you'd want to do strips with. If I get strips from the back of the craft store in my local Cultural Center for say a $1 (all community donated fabric they resell), I wash those too and I don't care one bit if they will possibly no longer be 2 1/2 strips. I wash them cause some ladies pre-wash and many say they never have prewashed any of their fabrics until after they are completed.......I don't have hot water hooked up to my washing machine so I've personally hand-washed 8-30gal totes of fabric and omg sooo many fabrics bleed. I figure oh well if not 2 1/2" then I'll one day use them for other stuff like strip-piecing or for foundation paper piecing.