Stitching Blogger's Question of the Week: Fabric Care?

How often do you wash your fabric for each project? Do you wait until the very end until to wash it or do you wash it more than once?

I usually wait until I've finished stitching everything before washing the fabric, I do this at the end as it is usually an automatic prelude to framing anyway.

I'm not sure how I'm going to be completing the Mermaid Queen. If she were dirty I would wash the fabric before I attached the beads which is the last step, but I think she's amazingly managed to miss any spills or drips.

The only time I've ever washed a piece of incomplete stitching was when I left it on the table and my soggy and somewhat muddy cat, Jasmine decided to come in an go to sleep on it! That was the Sunflower Girl that I did several years ago - but you'd never know until this day about her little mishap.