I always wash my fabrics. They hit the door, then to the laundry room. The smells of the chemicals on the fabrics bothers me. I use vinegar in the rinse water too. :)

um... what's a color catcher? I gather it pulls bled color out of the water and keeps it from going on to other fabric? huh? HOW does it to DO that? :-)

I usually prewash and at times was in a hurry to begin a quilt and didn't wash the fabrics and everything worked out OK.
My problem now is that DIL asked me to make her a quilt, she's paying for all the materials and quilting. She picked out a kit from Connecting Threads that has has lots of blues and creams and some cranberry. Fabric feels a little thin, would hate to have it shrink and/or color bleed when she has to the quilt. I could give her some color catchers but will she remember them when she has to wash the quilt in the future? Will the fabrics shrink and the quilt look wrinkled and she won't like? I plan to use Quilter's Dream Poly batting, will that shrink the quilt up a little when it's washed? Think after typing this out I've convinced myself to prewash the fabrics, better to safe than sorry. May in Jersey

Don't know how it does that but it does. May in Jersey

I very rarely wash my fabrics unless I know it is OLD and is black, dk green, red or any dark color that may bleed a lot. I buy lower price fabrics from Hancocks, Joanns and a Fabric Outlet and do not have any problems. Bought a dark green at a LQS, tried a small piece in hot water - it bled! Go figure.

I ALWAYS wash flannels because they shrink so much!

I only pre-wash flannel. Never jelly rolls..they will come apart!

Ditto :D

;-) Hi, As I said in an early post I had pre-washed some JellyRolls the only thing that happened was that they did srink some but I was able to iron them back in shape. The fabric didn't fall apart but it would have saved time if they had not been pre washed. I am making a rail fence quilt and you can't tell from the fabric if I pre washed or not. Maybe I was just lucky this time.