In 2022, I'm on a quest to sew more and upgrade my quilting skills. I've been using Best Press a ton more, and seeing lots of wonderful results, but also some odd puckers when I used Best Press after completing a block, to help flatten everything.
So I started researching Starching Best Practices and Strategies, and there are a ton of pieces of advice. So in the sections below, I share some of my understanding of starch and fabrics, I list a few of the tips and techniques I've tried, and where I've decided to land (last least, for now!).
Fact: Starch Makes Fabric Shrink
It is clear that my sew then starch strategy is not the right way to go. Most cotton quilting
fabric shrinks (for instance, Jelly Rolls and Charms do not shrink evenly, one way the grain will shrink significantly more than the other). By sewing and then starching, I was creating crazy wavy lines and puckers, like this block from Moda Blockheads 4.
Best practices suggest always ironing your fabric before cutting for the best accuracy. If you're going to starch, you need to do that before ironing, and then cutting your pieces.
I decided to give it a try, so I started to research some techniques.
Technique # 1: Lightly Spray and Iron
The easiest (and quickest) option is to lightly starch your fabric, and then immediately iron it. That gives a relatively low amount of structure to the fabric, but does give the fabric some stiffness and structure.
Extra tip: spray the back of the fabric, flip and iron from the front. It pulls the starch through the grain of the fabric and makes it a bit more sturdy.
While I like this option, it still doesn't work for everything (bias seams) because the structure is still pretty flexible. I think this is a good option for quicker projects and things that don't require as much precision (in other words, I'm not going to use this on tiny HSTs and 1" squares!).
Technique #2: Heavy Starch (Grain-Based Starch used for Laundry) and Hang to Air Dry
This is the technique that is heavily touted by Kimberly of Fat Quarter Shop. Her videos show her using and and cans of laundry spray starch (like Niagara) and hanging dripping cuts of fabric on laundry drying mats all over her bathroom for hours.
Some of the warnings about this technique involve doing it in a place, like a bathroom, where you can let it dry, and being careful because it gums up the floors. Other cons: it is more expensive (uses a ton of spray cans of starch, less environmentally friendly). It takes a ton of time and space, and you need to plan ahead.
I tried this, and I find it works in some instances -- for instance, if you are sewing an all-HST quilt where there are a ton of bias seams, you would really do well with this technique. But I don't see this being my go-to for most projects. I just don't want to use that amount of starch (and a food-based starch also could lead to problems with bugs if you don't wash your quilt pretty quickly, gross). And it's more time and space than I want to put into starch endeavors.
Technique #3: Marinate your Background Fabric.
Fabric Designer Gerri Robinson, on her youtube channel, espouses her own technique, to heavily spray your background fabric, only, let it hang dry, and then iron & cut it. This theory is based on the fact that most quilts have heavy amounts of background and it's typically sewn to the non-background fabric (though not always), so you have a quilt that is half-stabilized.
I tried this technique, and it does work pretty well, depending upon your design. If the background is the predominant fabric, and all bias and other challenging seams include background fabric, this helps. but I think you would need to be careful about what pattern you pick to go with this method, and you have to also not use any starch in ironing your blocks from here-out or you'll have weird shrinkage of the non-background fabrics. I also haven't tried this and then washed a quilt, so I'm not sure about uneven shrinkage.
While I'll keep this in the arsenal for those instances where I'm willing to give it a try, this is not my preferred method.
Technique 4: Medium Spray, Air Dry (on the ironing table) and Iron
In this technique, lay out your fabric, and do a medium spray. Make sure most of the fabric has gotten sprayed, but it's not overly damp. Leave it to air dry (at least 5-10 minutes) on the ironing surface, and then iron from both sides of the fabric.
I did this today on a bunny table runner, and I loved how crisp and clean and precise this allowed me to be.
I found this to be a great mix of the amount of starch and time invested, and the outcome. This is going to be my go-to (unless I'm doing something really intricate or full of tons of bias-y pieces. I am also going to keep Technique #1 in my pocket for those things I'm doing that don't need to be super precise and clean.
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