[Regia-NA] Re: washing fabric
Tracie Brown
trbrown at uga.edu
Tue Mar 2 13:37:42 EST 2004
With linen, even the expensive stuff, I serge or zigzag the
ends, then wash in hot, rinse in cold and machine dry on hot.
Remove from dryer immediately -- don't let it sit and
wrinkle -- and hang until cool. If you fold it while hot or
warm, the fold lines will set. It will shrink, but you will
get a great bouncy nubbley texture that need not -- indeed,
should not -- be ironed (normally). After the garment is
made, I machine wash on cold or warm (if really filthy), toss
in the dryer on permanent press for a few minutes to get out
some of the wrinkles, remove while damp, give it a few shakes
and hang to finish drying. Or hand wash/machine wash on
delicate and hang dry.
By the way, I've had good results with unnaturally colored
linen and Rit dye remover. 2 packages did the trick on 2 4-5
yd pieces. Just follow the directions and make sure the
powder is completely dissolved before adding the wet fabric.
I did two pieces of bright red linen together and one turned
a great exhaust-bath madder color and the other a "nice" baby-
poop green. The separate navy blue turned a greyish cheap
woad blue (with some lighter splotches because -- you guessed
it -- the dye remover wasn't completely dissolved.)
I like to pre-wash my wool, but usually I don't mistreat it
as much as the linen. A nice permanent press or delicate
cycle (not too much agitation), hand squeeze (don't wring)
the water out and line dry or dry flat. As long as you never
do anything worse to the garment when you wash it, it should
be all right. I've also abused wool to full it (hot wash,
cold rinse, machine dry), which can result in fairly heavy
fabric -- good for cloaks and hoods (improves the water
repellancy) but not so good for flowing gowns. Pre-washing
wool and (ghasp!) wool blends takes out the modern sizing and
makes them look less modern. What fulls them down is the
combination of hot water and soap, followed by the shock of
the cold rinse and the additional shock of the hot dryer.
Happy sewing.
-- Tracie
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