I always prewash my fabric. I don't want dirt, bedbugs, chemicals or allergens coming into my home. I also don't want bleeding fabric or surprise shrinkage.

Anyway, I'm so GLAD I'm a anal, prewasher. I happened upon a Craigs List ad last week for fabric. I traveled about 45 mins. and found a granddaughter selling her grandmother's stash. I guess grandmom had passed away and they were storing all her fabric in huge garbage bags out in a storage shed. I got 8 HUGE bags of fabric for $40!!! About 80% of it was quilting cottons. The rest of it I freecycled. I found a large spider in one of the bags and thought that was the worst thing that would happen. I spent the day washing and drying it, but left about 10 yards of fabric in my laundry hamper that I didn't have time to get to. I pulled it out today to wash it, and at the bottom of the hamper and I am not joking, were about 50 maggots. I about died. The fabric was all clean looking, no smells or dead things in it. But something had laid eggs in the bags...maybe a fly or moth or catepillar. Bringing the bags into my warm house caused them all to hatch. I quickly washed and dried the remaining fabric and fed the maggots to my chickens. Can you imagine what my sewing room would be like right now if I hadn't prewashed and dried this fabric???? I get the willies thinking about it. <shudder>

Another reason to add to my growing list of reasons as to why I always prewash. I don't want maggots....ewwww.

I wanna barf. Glad you're a pre-washer, too.

Upcycling maggots. You go girl!

ewww is right!

EWWWWW how awful to find that surprise! But in the end, after all the washing, you got a Great Deal!

Holy Cow is all I can say!

So glad you posted this, although I'm sorry you had to go thru this. I will look before I bring anything into my house from a rummage sale, etc. I wash everything I buy used, but sometimes bring it to my washer before I do, NO MORE!!

Feeding them to the chickens made me think of when I was in grammer school. Daddy raised a tobacco crop and my brother and I would go thru the patch and pick off the tobacco worms and feed them to the chickens. Daddy would pay us for how many worms we picked off. Sounds gross now, but we thought it was a way to get enough for a candy bar or something small. Not much money back then.

I hope the freecycle people prewash too:< I feel bad, but I don't have any way to warn them. What's odd is that this fabric looked in almost pristine condition and had no issues. And it washed and dried up fine. But, YIKES.

Luckily, my laundry basket has no ventilation holes in the bottom and they were contained. Otherwise they'd be crawling everywhere right now.

Yes, chickens love this kind of thing! They were thrilled. I was not.

My DGD would have been real happy for a snack for her bearded dragon! I'm sorta' glad she lives in FL and I'm in OH! My DIL is getting used to finding mealy worms in her fridge, YUK!! Although, I shouldn't be so surprised considering my son is the one who talked them into it!! Boys!!!! Do they ever grow up?