I am thinking about doing one of the swaps. For the swaps you need to wash the fabric before you send the cuts pieces. I threw all my dark fabrics in the wash. When I took them out of the wash the fabric was fraying & knotted the fabric into a big ball. I lost alot of fabric when that happened.

How do I prevent this from happening again? I have more fabric to wash. Please help.

Thanks for the suggestion!!

Try putting the smaller pieces in a laundry net next time.

Or just hand wash them and let them air dry (of course, I'd never in a million years do this myself because I'm too lazy).

Or safety pin the pieces together first before tossing them in the machine.

Or if it's a fabric swap, wash the bigger piece or fabric and THEN cut the swap size block.

This is why I never do any swaps or round robins anymore. ;)

Gentle cycle in a lingerie bag its not dirty your just checking color fastness and shrinking.

I have tried two things. Wash before you cut. Or if small pieces you can wash in a salad spinner works really well.

For larger pieces, I either pink the edges. But learned on here if you just cut a little edge of the fold in the fabric they do not ravel near as much.

This is how I do fabric in the wash. I use Safety pins and fold the fabric in half, in half,in half, so on depending how big/ long/yards ete... Stop when its about 45inchs x 1yard or little less in size, then pin each corner now it can't twist up :!: Also less to iron :!:

How big were your cuts? From the sounds of your post I would think they were small, and the garment bag/lingerie bag could be a good solution for you. I don't often wash anything smaller than a fat quarter.

How did you lose the fabric, was it so tangled you were able to untangle it? That stinks. :( Unless you have like ten yards of fabric it helps to wash on a getle cycle and you may only need 15-20 minutes drying time in a hot dryer. I try to keep it minimal because the longer you let them dry all those wrinkles set it and are harder to remove. You can usually spray out with a little water or best press any wrinkle from the dryer. Also when I pull my fabric out of the washer I snip threads and sort of shake out each piece of fabric before tossing into the dryer. If you toss that tangled ball into the dryer it will come out a tangled ball of wrinkles! Lol*

I tend to wash small pieces by hand after i had the same problems as you did the fabric came out of the washing machine in a massive tangle of knots and frayed cotton ends i could have cried lol when i saw it as some of the fabric had to be cut to get it out,,so I now hand wash, a lot of work but at least i have all my fabric pieces intact lol

I think people like to wash the other chemicals out of them too. Like whatever is put in them to avoid bugs, etc. Some people have even said they're allergic to whatever chemicals are in them (formaldehyde? I can't remember exactly what is in fabric).

You don't have to wash them at all if you don't want to. There are a lot of people who like to use their fabric fresh off the bolt then wash the quilt after to shrink it up and get a nice antique look. I don't prefer that look myself, and when it gets to scraps it's nice to have everything prewashed so they wear and wash the same when in a quilt.

You also may want to prewash not only to remove sizing, but to remove any excess dye before putting that fabric in a quilt. Batik's are notorious bleeders...and better to discover how your fabric will react to a washing or detergent before you spent 900 hours putting it into a quilt. ;)

In the first post of this thread, the OP noted that these pieces were for a SWAP.

Swap rules dictate that ALL fabric MUST be washed. Actually, I think it might even be the board swap rules.

Doesn't matter what the personal preference is.

I don't prewash, ever; ergo, I don't participate in swaps.