I'm so glad the starch did the trick for you!

Starch does a great job of holding the fabric in place. I usually start out light and add as needed!!

i wouldn't starch faux suede. try backing it with freezer paper, use a pressing cloth on top. I don't put much direct heat on that stuff.

I totally agree. Starch is great it makes cutting and piecing so much easier.

I always thought using starch was a waste of time UNTIL I had my stadium light bulb moment too!!! Now I don't leave home without it!!!

My LQS owner advised us in a class to use sizing. She sprayed her sample block at all stages of the sewing and cutting. Then she made another one with no sizing. The difference was amazing! It sure made believers out of us and has really improved my piecing!

I also like to use heavy starch. Straighter seams pointier points.

When you starch the fabric really stiff, does it soften up thru the quilting process? Or do you have these stiff blocks that's being sewed together? If you have the quilt top LA'd, does this make it easier or more difficult?

I've been starching, but not til stiff. Just wondering if I should be starching more.

I have been starching faithfully since I first saw it mentioned in a tutorial somewhere and would never want to do without it. I was just remembering a desperate situation a friend of mine ran into many years ago. Someone, learning that she could sew, had asked her to make a skirt from a very easy pattern. She said "Sure", thinking "How hard could that be?" She found out that it could be very hard indeed because the woman picked a light, sheer, filmy, slick, stretchy, fraying fabric - your worst nightmare. I now know that very likely the solution to the problem (which none of her sewing friends came up with at the time) might have been to starch the heck out of it.

I'm a starch & iron believer too. Staflo liquid starch - half & half in spray bottle. The kind in a can always stops up before I use it all. StaFlo is cheaper too.