I washed it, and this is what happened. Do I have to trim all these? I feel like Flik in Ants. Squish me, just squish me now.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]601114[/ATTACH]

I'm not the one to give advice on patchwork, but that is normal. I have never seen quilters use binding or any seam type closing the edge of the fabric. It usually holds up, wash after wash, decade after decade, since there's layers of batting and backing fabric you will not notice. You can always trim the freying thread ends, is it a lot of work?

I accidentally posted this to the machine subforum. Thanks for your help.

You should PM a mod and ask them to move the topic for you.

I washed it because I got a spot wet, and the purple glue stick got purple again, and it freaked me out, lol. Also, its made from plaid shirts, and there were a few pieces that were a bit dodgy, and i was afraid they'd split at a seam when it was washed, and I wanted to know before I did all the work of quilting it. Also, I did a stupid thing when I removed some spots, and i was afraid there may have been a remaining piece of the white fabric that was still affected by the stupidity which would have made a hole after washing. So, it was mostly to check that the patchwork was in good enough shape to go on to the next step.

OK, I know you're all going to ask, so here's the doltish maneuver: I has some rust spots I wanted to see if I could get out, so I used some CLR bathroom cleaner. It's an acid, what could go wrong, right? Also, I'm sure I didn't rinse it out well enough, and when I pressed one of those spots, which had indeed disappeared, by the way, the was a scorched spot. Uh, oh... And when I scratched the spot, it disintegrated. Yeah, that's definitely gonna leave a mark, right?

Well, you know they say we learn our best lessons from our mistakes. It seems to be working for me...

I’d put it on the batting and see if a lot of the darker strings show through the lighter blocks. If they do, I’d try to remove as much as possible and at least trim some of the longer ones.

Unfortunately you do need to trim them all. You should never wash a quilt top before sandwich, quilted and bound.

Thanks for sharing your list of boo-boos. I, too, have had to learn the hard way sometimes and you made me laugh with your progression! Definitely some things I would have considered doing. I'd say trim only the threads that will show against the white and move on. You've learned a lot and need a win now! It will be a lovely quilt with all of those plaids.

I'd pick a comfortable chair and trim all those little threads, being very careful to not cut a hole in any of the pieced quilt. I would probably press it first, so everything is laying flat, but not really sure about that.

Edited to add: I am ADD about trimming all those extra threads when just doing piecing, much less, if I had to wash the top before it was quilted. I quilt my own quilts on a longarm and have had to unroll to trim a thread when I could see it through the batting.