[Regia-NA] Re: washing fabric

[Kathy]

Thanks Tracie.. and everyone else who contributed to this trhead.. ( no punintended!)..  very useful information  I use linen mostly as backing for embroidery.. a shop in Granville Island usually has scraps of linen  for a modest fee.. mostly black and beige.. but that works just fine for my purposes..

have not used wool for garb as i am allergic to the stuff. Some of it anyway..  not all wool sets me off itching  but anything even remotely woolen will turn my partner into one very unhappy bubber..

 

cheers on this bright sunny Tuesday morning

katja 



Tracie Brown <trbrown at uga.edu> wrote: 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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