Prewashing jelly rolls
 

I prewash my fabric to shrink before working on it, as well as to get out some of the dye. For this reason I usually buy yardage and fat quarters and occassionally layer cakes. I know that fabric shrinks more one way than the other (either crosswise or lengthwise, can't remember which, not that which way makes a difference) and that affects things. I have a pattern I want to make with a jelly roll but am very wary that prewashing will skew the fabric too much and too much will be lost with raveling so the fabric will no longer be sized the way it needs to be. If I don't prewash or presoak or pre anything what can I expect after washing the quilt the first time (in warm or hot water) after it is completed? Will the shrinking and skewing ruin the quilt? This quilt is a gift for a young man who will probably toss the quilt in the washer with everything else when it comes time to wash it so giving him directions on how to wash won't do much good. Plus I like to give them a final wash before gifting.

I rarely pre wash fabric and haven't had problems with it shrinking after the quilt is done. I do toss a couple color catchers in the wash.

I pre wash yardage and FQs, but never jelly rolls or layer cakes. I prefer to work with fabric that has been washed, but I just take my chances with the pre-cuts.

I use jelly rolls and never prewash. I think that would be a nightmare!
that being said, so far i have not had any issues with weird shrinkage

after quilting and binding i do wash. I like the slightly crinkle results

Short form: Although I am big on prewashing, I'd risk a commercial set of jellyrolls. I have concerns over where my seam allowance is on the ones with pinked edges, but honestly haven't had much experience with them.

Long Form: In all my years of quilting (45!) I've only had one project ruined by running fabric. I prewashed it but didn't check that it was fully set. It was a "quilt shop quality fabric" and it never stopped running. Started out as dark maroon, after seven or so washings it was more orange than anything else. I also used a blue from the same line with no problems. Unfortunately the quilt also had white squares, that was what was really ruined they turned baby pink with no going back :(

I've never had a project ruined by shrinkage but I have not used fabric where I was unhappy with the quality once the sizing and such was pre-washed out of the (name brand) fabric and elected to not use that fabric.

I don't typically buy jellyrolls but I do have a package of something like 10 2.5" pieces -- I'm going to do a test in my impeller (no agitator) new washing machine to see how they come out -- will just toss them in with a few towels or whatevers and see how they come out.

For me, it is not the raveling of long skinny pieces, but rather the knotting up and tangled mess that they can become, strangling other things in the process. I buy a lot of my fabric at thrift stores or estate sales and often have long narrow WoF (width of fabric) pieces -- they are by far the worst to prewash, will take a 6-10" square any day over a long narrow.

If you really want to wash the strips, I'd suggest putting just a few each into lingerie bags or pillow cases (I use my ponytail elastics to close the pillow cases). You can put as many bags as the washer can hold!

I use jelly rolls a lot for charity quilts. I don’t pre wash but I do throw them in the dryer for 10-15 minutes. It helps to get rid of the pinked edges, which are usually all over my clothes. When I wash finished quilt, I use color catchers.

It is a personal preference as to pre-washing or not. But I wouldn't wash jelly rolls because of all the reasons already mentioned in this thread.
I put color catchers in with my quilt when I wash it. And I always wash them before giving them away.
Let us know what you decide.

I've never washed jelly rolls nor had a problem with them after going into a quilt. If any doubt of bleeding I throw a color catcher in. I hope this helps.

All you have to do is steam press pre cuts to see if they will bleed and get the shrinkage out of them. Jelly roll strips will shrink only one way, by the length never the width.

I'm afraid washing in any other way than hand-rinsing in a sink of warm water and then hanging to dry is gonna result in a jelly roll you will not be able to use. Every jelly roll I've ever seen that was put in a washing machine -- even on "delicate" has been a frayed, matted up mess. (I saw at least a dozen, maybe more, working at JoAnn's -- people would wash them and then bring them back for a refund when they had ruined the roll by putting it in the washing machine.)

I washed some 2.5 inch Hoffman cut strips. They shrunk 1/8 inch in width. This about 15 years ago.

I am not a prewasher unless I suspect bleeding. I have never prewashed a precut. I was given three charm packs that had been prewashed. A mess, none were the same size and I ended up trimming them down to 4.5 to make them the same usable size. Some shrunk less than 1/16th inch, while others nearly 1/2 inch and were wonky. The pinked edges were a no longer sharp points and I cut them all off. Poor quality fabric? Poor cutting of the charm pack? Maybe, but they were glorious colors and the fabric had a good "feel" so fussed with them and made a donation quilt with them.

I have never tried this but I recall a suggestion to soak precuts in moderately hot water then put them in a "salad spinner" to get the water out. The idea was that this would be easier on the fabric and not damage the edges. What? Who still has a "salad spinner"? I choose to just use the jelly roll or charms or layer cakes as is.

I just bought a salad spinner last summer for three reasons:

To get excess water out of small pieces of fabric
To get excess water off waahed fruits and vegetables
to get excess water out of blanched broccoli before freezing it

No one has ever a swerved this question when I have asked it:

If one has enough reason to wash a large piece of fabric, wouldn't there be enough reason to wash a small piece of the same fabric?

In theory, yes.
Whatever you’re worried might happen to the large piece of fabric-bleeding, shrinkage-could also happen to the small piece of fabric.

But in practice, washing lots of small pieces of fabric is a whole different experience, because you have way more edges, and edges fray.
I’ve never washed 2.5 inch strips of fabric because I’d be concerned about all those frayed edges, and the strips themselves knotting around each other. If I lose even a fraction of an inch at the edge, the whole piece doesn’t work.

When I wash a whole yard of fabric, I might even serge the raw edges, but if I don’t, and there’s fraying, I just cut it off and still have lots of usable cloth.

Thats just my humble opinion.

I washed some 2.5 inch Hoffman cut strips. They shrunk 1/8 inch in width. This about 15 years ago.

Was it baiks in the jelly roll? That long ago there was no standard for how a pre cut was actually cut. Believe it or not Missouri Star had the standard for all pre cuts to be the same, in cuts and amounts per pre cut name. They were buying massive bulk orders, the manufactures complied.

Forgot to add in my post. Hoffman use to have the batik jelly rolls cut by hand. It was on the package cuts may vary due to the fact of the hand cutting.

I think thet were cut by whoever got rid of them. It was a Christmas print with gold metallic on regular quilting cotton.

I pre-wash everything for two reasons: So I don't have to deal with any chemicals the fabric has been treated with or any soiling that has occurred in passage, and because I prefer the idea of any bleeding or shrinkage happening before stitching. I agree with the notion stated above, that if their are reasons to wash a larger piece of fabric, those same reasons apply to a smaller piece of fabric.

I've worked with jelly rolls twice. I did wash them. I washed them by hand, spun them in mesh bags in the dryer, and hung on the line to dry. Fabric shrinks much more over its width than over its length (just like it's much stretchier over its width than over its length). Since jelly rolls are cut across the width of fabric, they shrink much more over their length (the width of fabric) than over their width (the length of fabric). So those jelly rolls I washed shrunk a bit in width, but not enough to prevent me from using them as 2.5" strips (I think one set was pinked and the other wasn't). I didn't bother checking to see how much they'd shrunk over their length.

Here's my test -- the package I had (I think I got when my local Tuesday Morning was one of the first to close down) had 2 strips each of 7 different colors, so I used one set so I could compare them with the others. They all seemed well cut at 2.5". In their defense, the back of the package said Do Not Prewash! (Picture 1)

I layered them into my impeller (no agitator) washer with the towels on the bottom and a 4 yard piece of yardage on top. I didn't have any color catchers but I did have an old school/well used dye grabber from back when they were cloth... While they did come out snarled, it wasn't as bad as I expected. (Picture 2). I carefully separated them and cut off the loose threads and tried not to stretch or otherwise alter the fabric. I then dried them with the towels for maybe 10-15 minutes.

Even including the thready edges, they were all consistently about 1/8" narrowert after the wash/dry. When I measured between the frayed edges, they were over 2" and closer to 2.25. Some pieces frayed more than others. The lengths of the fabric was at least 1 to 1.5" shorter! The big thing for me was the color loss in the purple -- they look like two entirely different shades after the washing, which is why I left a line of the dark purple. The turquoise also had quite a bit of color loss, the others were not so bad. (Picture 3).

You can wash jelly rolls, but test the method I am suggesting on scraps to see if you like the results.

Safety pin 5 jellyroll strips together, End. Middle, other end. Do this until all strips are pinned. Put them in a lingerie bag, zip it shut. Wash in cold or warm water on gentle. (Use color catchers if you want.)

When done, hang individual strips over towel racks/shower curtain until dry.

I rarely do this, though.

Bearisgray, I've wondered the same question you posted many times! but my answer has turned out to be pretty much like LI diva's. I prewash as much as practical for any fabric that will go into a quilt I expect the user to be washing, hoping it will shrink/bleed less for the end user. I'm a new quilter and only made 5 quilts so far. I haven't washed jelly rolls because it seems like they'd just end up a frayed mess. I figured, if a good portion of my quilts would already be preshrunk, it wouldn't be the end of the world if some jelly roll bits shrunk a little after the quilt was finished. It turns out that in the quilts that have both jelly roll (not prewashed) and yardage (prewashed) intermixed -- after washing the finished product, it's just fine! The quilt is still straight, the jelly roll parts aren't apparently shrunk out of proportion to the prewashed parts. So, I'll keep on prewashing stuff FQ or bigger, but not worry about prewashing tiny precuts.

The only reason I wash pre-cuts is because of the chemicals effect my fingers. So I use a small amount of Woolite or Dawn dish soap in my large salad spinner. Make sure it is well rinsed, spin, hang dry. I haven't worried about shrinkage, just the chemicals. If it's a small project that I won't be working for days on it - such as a Christmas stocking size or a small table runner, I don't pre-wash, I just wash my hands after sewing.

I just avoid buying those strips and small precuts.

It is important to me to try to avoid unpleasant surprises like bleeding and shrinking.

I have had enough of those in the past.

What is surprising to me is how few other people have seemed to have these issues.