Sizing was developed for synthetics and fabric blends. It restores the original body to fabrics without stiffness and can be used on natural fabrics for a light finish. Regular starch gives more body than sizing and can be used on natural fabrics and blends that have a higher natural fiber contents.
Some quilters claim starch attracts silverfish and other bugs, so they never use it unless planning to wash out the starch in the finished project. Other quilters assert that starching is fine – just not for stored fabrics.
In the Sept. 2011 workshops, instructor Karen Combs had us use fabric sizing to stabilize the fabric because we were creating diamonds with bias edges; the sizing was to keep the bias edges from stretching.
Diane Gaudinski mixes her own starch and uses it in all aspects of piecing and quilting; saying "Starch makes a huge difference for successful machine quilting in a home machine." Read all about how Diane uses starch in her quilting at http://dianegaudynski.blogspot.com/2010/02/starch.html
Watch Leah Day’s video on starching and ironing largish fabric lengths at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwrETCcgMX0
Read collected tips on starching and sizing use at http://www.straw.com/equilters/library/tips-hows/starch1.html
Read starching tips from Quilters Newsletter magazine at http://quiltingmemories.com/PDF/Starching%20Tips.pdf
