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Pre-Shrinking Fabric
Pre-Shrinking is Essential
... which also means... buy enough fabric to pre-shrink!
Ready-to-wear is usually sold ready-to-shrink, which is why you see so many Dry Clean Only tags on clothes in stores. It saves the manufacturer time and money if they don't preshrink, and then side-step responsibility for cleaning mistakes by the customer. Of course, YOU get to pay for dry cleaning for the life of the garment, too bad!
But since you are NOT buying the costume you are making, why not treat yourself to a long, happy relationship with your new costume piece and take a little time to pre-shrink. The US Extension Service states that 3% shrinkage will cause a garment to shrink ONE SIZE. Some fabrics will shrink up to 10%! (Hey, do I see ANOTHER reason garment makers don't want to pre-shrink their fabric?)
There ARE fabrics that are problematic when washed, especially if fragile or if you don't know how to dry them properly. For those fabrics, I suggest you cut a 4-6" square (square with the selvages), finish the edges, and then wash and dry it the way you intend to handle it in the future.
- Hand-wash in cool water and air dry flat on a supported surface is commonly considered to be the gentlest way to clean. But make SURE you rinse well!
- Some fabrics dry stiff unless they are moved while drying. For these, tumble dry on cool or drying in the shade during a breeze can work well.
- Front loader machines are gentler on clothes than top loaders, because the top loader's agitator keeps reversing directions, which creates some drag on the clothes.
Take a look at your swatch. Like what you see and feel? Then it is time to pre-shrink the costume fabric.
So, if I'm going to pre-shrink, how much extra do I need?
Good question!
- For synthetics, 5%. For natural fibers (cotton, rayon, silk, hemp) 10-15%. Do a Google search on the fabric fiber and get a feeling for what you are dealing with.
- Loosely-woven fabrics (like a gauze) will shrink more than normal fabrics.
- Most fabrics will shrink much more in length than in width.
- If you must have a CLOSE estimate, preshrinking a swatch (see above) comes in handy. After you cut the swatch, put a safety pin or stitch a small loop of ribbon on one of the edges that runs parallel to the selvage so that you will know which is the length and which is the width. Wash and dry it. Then use simple arithmetic to scale the shrinkage to the actual dimensions of the fabric.
Assuming you started with a 6-inch square sample with two sides cut parallel to the selvage:
- Estimate lengthwise shrinkage per yard by multiplying whatever length was lost in the patch by 6. In short; if the patch shrank 1/2 inch lengthwise, then expect a 3-inch loss per yard. Which means: buy 39 inches of fabric for each yard of fabric needed.
- Estimate widthwise shrinkage by dividing the width of the unshrunk fabric by 6, round up, then multiply that number by whatever length was lost in the patch and round up again. In short: if the original fabric is 44 inches wide, and the the patch lost 1/2 inch of width, then expect a 4" loss in width (44/6 = 7.3; 7.3 x 0.5 = 3.65; round up to 4 inches).
Okay, I'm ready to pre-shrink! Now what!
I'll assume that you have either tested a swatch or know from experience that this fabric can be washed. So..
- IF you plan on dyeing this fabric in a simmering water bath then -- no need to preshrink! The hot dye bath will do the preshrinking for you, no problem.
- If you are washing 3 or more yards of fabric, then I suggest you sew the fabric into a circle (raw ends together, use basting stitch) before you wash and dry it. This will GREATLY cut down on the amount of twisting that occurs during pre-shrinking and makes the yardage easier to handle...especially if there is a lot of it.
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