This is a good question, but not one that can be answered easily. A lot depends on personal preference and quilting style. For example, I am an impulse quilter. I like to go to my stash, pull some fabric, get out my mat and rotary cutter, and start cutting. I don’t do a lot of preplanning. (Yeah, I know, it shows.) I don’t want to have to worry about whether my fabric has been prewashed or not so I prewash everything before it gets put on my shelves. I don’t want bleeding and I don’t like the feel of fabric fresh off the bolt. I want to be able to work with fabric that is without any kind of finish or sizing in it.
People who want the puckered look of antique quilts do not like to prewash their fabric. They want the quilt fabric and batt to shrink together to provide that old-fashioned look. I don’t like the puckered look because I feel that it doesn’t display the quilting to the best advantage. But then I don’t make reproduction quilts.
Getting confused yet?
To research this article I looked at The Art of Classic Quiltmaking by Harriet Hargrave and Sharyn Craig. I discovered that if I must prewash there are a lot of dos and don’ts involved. Harriet does not recommend it for a variety of reasons that would give a chemist a headache. The correct laundry product must be used, the temperature of the water must be just right; the use of Dye Magnets is desirable; you get the picture.
I should have known better than to look at Harriet’s book. She always scares the heck out of me. I am going to nominate her for chief of the quilt police, or, at least, general all- around quilt boogey-man. She feels that we “need to understand the properties of each fabric we work with.” If I went through all the machinations she does to test her fabrics before she sits down to make a quilt I would never get around to making a one.
Now I really didn’t start out to make this a criticism of Harriet Hargrave and her methods. In fact, she makes wonderful quilts, which, given all the care and preparation, will probably last for millennia. And I definitely feel that the above mentioned book would be a great addition to any serious quilter’s library, but don’t get it until you have enough experience under your belt so that you can decide to do things a little less precisely than she does without feeling guilty or insecure.
Anyway, back to the prewash or no prewash question; do what you are comfortable with, just remember all the horror stories about reds that ran, blues that bloomed, and greens that gushed. My personal recommendation is that if the quilt is ever to be washed, prewash the fabric. If you are making an art quilt or a wall hanging that should never see a drop of H2O, maybe you don’t need to. And if you want to scare the stuffing out of yourself, get a copy of the book.
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