Friday, August 14, 2009

Pre-wash or Not?


I generally pre-wash all my fabrics before I use them in a project. Above you see a pillowcase made from a Connecting Threads kit last fall and the one I completed recently. I pre-washed the fabrics in the rose and green version. Since they shifted some in the process, I had to square up and trim off the serged edges. As you can see, there was a considerable amount lost to the prep process.

I will take measurements and see what happens to the more recent pillowcase made from a Connecting Threads kit. Stay tuned.

Note: Test results are in. I washed and dried the pillowcase with a load of laundry. There was no shrinkage. The pillowcase was and is 30 inches long and 21.75 inches wide.

1 comment:

Dena said...

I always pre-wash my fabrics. Of course the amount of shrinkage will determine on the fabric, but there have been times when I've lost over 25% of usable fabric. I think sometimes the machines pull too much while the fabric is being put onto the bolts resulting in a lot of distortion. Such a waste of money when that happens.