I'll had my 2¢ to that pot too! :thumbup:

This is the best reason of all to pre wash, formaldehyde is a deadly chemical, it has been long know that it off gasses for a long time. Our skin is the largest organ in or body, to not wash fabric means you are exposing yourself to everything that fabric came in contact with in its previous environment, and that can run the gamut from bug poop to human germs. YUK!
Pat

I usually wash after quilting. After reading this while a quilt as in the drier. I will wash first. Then I took my quilt out , 6 colour catchers still evidence of running and it shrunk.
Wash first. From now on.

I must confess do not wash fabric before and my son claimed his quilt before I could wash it. I do wash baby blankets before I give them. Other than that. I don't think of it. The mice thing will probably change my mind.

I ALWAYS wash.
I put toooo much effort in a quilt for it to FADE or SHINK.

Good advice....Thanks..

Being old (66) I have always washed fabric, to make sure it doesn't shrink, color run etc. From this board I now surge the ends so they don't ravel, and don't iron until I want to use it, as it is all stored in plastic bins and I would have to iron to use out of bin, but do fold it nice and flat with no wrinkles. Now I have another reason to wash it. Dear mice, gives me the chills. What a way for poor mouse to die. And fabric, I will never not wash again.

A question:

If large cuts of fabric may have 'issues' - why would a person think that small cuts (such as charm squares) would be issue free?

I know that washing small pieces of fabric may be a 'bother' - but if bugs, chemicals, shrinkage, bleeding,etc. might be a problem with a large piece of fabric, why would it NOT be a problem when it's cut into a little piece?

The shops can't help what is shipped to them. We lived in the far east for many years while being stationed there. Our wives club would take tours of where things were made and if you could see where fabrics are stored before being shipped out you would wash and wash. Filthy warehouses open to rats, mice spiders and snakes loved to bury up in it. And those large water bugs roaches on hormones. I don't know what they are like now but in the 60's and early 70's that was the conditions there.

I was taught, (way back in the dark ages) when I learned to quilt, to always wash my fabrics when they come in the house. That way I have no doubt, when I put something together, if it will shrink or bleed or whatever. Before I learned this little tidbit, I had had that problem with putting fabrics together that shrank differently when washed. No more!
Judy

I use to wash fabric when I made clothes but I will go back to washing with quilts now.

I don't usually prewash except fabrics for baby quilts, I think you may have changed my mind. Most of the fabric from overseas has to be fumigated before entry to the US and I don't make baby quilts with it without washing first.

I almost always pre-wash my fabrics, whether it is new fabric from the store, older fabric that has been in totes for a while, and I think would just smell fresher while I'm working on them; but then finding "critters" in fabric is another good reason to pre-wash fabrics. To avoid confusion about whether fabric is washed or not, I cut the corners on all 4 sides, that way I know it is washed.

The only fabric I prewash is flannel, but all my quilts get washed before use.

I know I never thought about this either & I have been buying fabric for over 40 years. It may be a small, small number of times that this could happen...I just wanted y'all to know that it COULD happen. Or maybe something was in the bolt next to the one you picked up. The bolt I was buying was a batik from Indonesia but I routinely wash everything anyway. As a matter of fact I have 2 bolts of Home Dec fabric that is dry clean only & it is driving me crazy NOT being able to wash it. I only bought it because it goes so well with my family room, I want to make drapes with it. And like I said the store is clean & well taken care of..they can not help what comes inside the folds of the fabric. This fabric was a recent delivery.

I'm a washer of everything except pre cuts and this is just another reason to do so!

Better safe than sorry. You never know what will bleed. Reds aren't the only faders. I always wash.

Is there any problem with thread? Is it stored and shipped under similar conditions? How would we ever wash it? What about yarn? Notions, patches, buttons, etc. It's so much to worry about.

I pre-wash and wash after my projects are completed, so at least my cloth is clean. I also spritz my ironing board with vinegar and go over it with a hot iron, then let the fan blow on it each evening to try and keep it fresher between washings.

My name is Sandy and I am a washer! I can't help it! I wash my fabric because of colors running, shrinkage and not knowing who or what has touched it! At least when it goes on my shelves, I know it's clean!

I prewash everything but thanks for the reminder.

Yikes, I always prewash, especially as I mostly make the dolls we give away to very sick kids. I do it because I know in some cancer conditions a doll may have to be sterilized, so I want the dresses (clothes) to be pre-shrank. Now hearing that I have yet one more reason to DO IT FOR THE SICK KDIS. (Most with cancer)

Same here. I bought Dove unscented body wash recently. Opened it and, guess what? It has a scent.

When I looked at the ingredients on the back, 'fragrance' was listed as the last ingredient.

Where I come from, fragrance = scent. Making it the last ingredient doesn't change that!

I wash fabrics to get the sizing, smells and fumigation out of them as I have allergies that are triggered by that stuff.

However, I would wash fabric whether I had the allergies or not. Here's why:

Most quilt shops are in some kind of shopping center. The quilt shop may be spotlessly clean (at least the parts we see), but the other shops in the store may not be. Since most of the shops in a shopping center share walls, plumbing pipes, heat/AC venting and roofs, lots of unwanted critters from less than spotless shops have EASY access to the spotlessly clean shops.

So I wash fabrics when I bring them home. Unless I am going to use them right away, I fold them right out of the dryer and put them away. They are ironed right before I use them.

To kill varmints in the precuts, you can iron them. I have put them in a small lengere (don't know if that's spelled right) net bag and washed them on gentle without a problem. Also rinsed them in a vinegar solution, rinsed again, and put them in the dryer. I can't remember whether I took them out of the bag before they went into the dryer, though.

Of course the other shops tell you that they never had such things. That's good for business. But it doesn't make it true.

If an area has heat or A/C, it is not sealed. It has vents that little varmints can crawl through. It's like a highway for them.

I worked in 2 LQS for several years, we never found anything gross or even unusual in our fabrics. We had everything from Bali batiks to fabrics from China, Korea and Japan ...

NEW fabric (on bolts from the manuf) comes very tightly wrapped in plastic ... maybe there's a process unknown to us, but I don't think fabric could be "fumigated" before it enters the country ???

Could somebody explain how these items mice, twigs leaves droppings get into the fabric bolts please.

I always wash my fabric to remove chemicals. I'm alllergic to formaldhyde and must use chemical fee laundry soap.

I have always been a pre-washer. As soon as I get it home, clip all four corners with my pinking blade, wash, dry and put away, iron right before using. For my pre-cuts, I wash and rinse using my salad spinner, FQ's, I have the plastic storage bins for washing and rinsing. The pre-cuts and FQ's I press dry.

All I can say is, WOW!! I wash my fabrics most of the time but I think I'm going to be an 'all the time' after reading this.

I am going to guess here. My thought is that when the fabric is in the factory and is being wound on the bolts mice running overhead on pipes/beams/etc could drop into the machinery. As for twigs/grass/bird droppings, like a poster told us Bali batiks are dried outside, the wind blows stuff around and when they are folding mega yards of fabric...'stuff happeneds'. AGAIN this certainly happens rarely but it happens enough that I was glad to be aware of something I had never considered. Things like this does not bother me as long as I know to properly prepare my fabric. It's just like I wouldn't eat veggies fresh out of the garden dirt without washing them. I wash new dishes before I use them, new clothes before I wear them...

I always wash my fabrics to get rid of the chemicals and sizing. This is very important for your backing
which always shrinks in the wash. I just use warm water in my washmachine. After the fabric is dry and ironed,
then you will have its exact size. And then no problems with cutting it to fit your quilt top and filling.

wow. Never thought of that...will wash

I guess Im in the minority . I will continue doing what I have done before. No prewashing . If I had to prewash everything then nothing will get done. Life is too short to worry aout the "What ifs". We are becoming a nation of paranoid people. I can't worry about the unknown or the unseen. I continue to enjoy life.

In my case it isn't a matter of I can't be bothered with pre washing; it is a matter of preventing serious health problems. I am extremely allergic to the chemicals used in the manufacturing and processing if fabrics. I developed an autoimmune disorder and my dermatologist has traced it back to my quilting mainly the chemicals on the fabrics. Before we could figure out what the trigger was I was covered head to toe in itchy scaly seepy wounds. I looked like a burn victim. I was in constant pain and the itching almost drove me insane. I now will be on steroids and biological injections for the rest of my life. My joints are affected and I now have advanced arthritis. I am at increased risks of infections. We traced it back to the chemicals in fabric because right before my symptoms started, I had taken about a 5 year break from quilting and had not touched fabric in that time.

So those that don't suffer any allergies from the chemicals in fabric just know that I am very jealous of you. And count yourself very fortunate!

Okay, so I have never prewashed fabrics bought at a store, but have always washed fabric finds from garage sales or thrift shops. For those that do prewash, do you wash each fabric separately or do you wash similar colors together? Do you run a full wash or do a quick wash? I do ALWAYS wash a quilt as soon as it's finished as I'm not going to give away a quilt only to find out later that it fell apart or bled when the person I gave it to washed it. May have to consider prewashing though as I've noticed my hands have been starting to itch when touching fabrics in quilt shops lately.

I prewash to prevent shrinkage in the finished product and to remove excess dye - along with the chemicals and whatever might get into the fabric at warehouses and during shipping. My back door enters into my utility room so new fabric is in the wash before my coat comes off.

This.

In all the years I've been going to fabric stores and watching fabric get cut (my entire life, since my mom sewed everything I wore as a kid), I've never once seen a mouse in a bolt of fabric, or droppings, or seeds, or anything else. I'm not saying they are never there, but I'm saying it has to be a very very small percentage of fabrics that have this sort of issue. It's just not enough to make me change my habits at this late stage.

Oh, and as someone said, why is everyone so concerned about yardage, but not too worried about precuts? I wouldn't think there's any difference in how they are handled and that if there's a vermin issue, it would affect the precuts too. They come off the same fabric runs as the bolts, and stored in much the same conditions.

I'm a prewasher, because my eyes water whenever I'm in a fabric shop. I must be allergic to whatever chemicals are in the fabric. I'm glad I am, because at least 5 times out of 10, my color catcher comes out with color on it. Yesterday, I washed the fabric I bought from Thousands of Bolts - all blues which are notorious for running. The beautiful dark blue backing ran buckets, so I treated it with Synthrapol. The other blues were ok - surprising, because 2 were dark blues. I didn't measure the shrinkage, but I could tell there was some, because all the cuts were 1 yard pieces, and some were shorter than others after ironing! Doesn't matter, because I bought more than I need for the current project. I need more blues in my stash!