So I started the process of pretreating my wool crepe for the Galaxy-inspired dress. After several swatches, my chosen method was to wash on the gentle, low-spin cycle in baby shampoo and then steam press until dry. All but one of my four 6"x6" swatches shrunk by 1/2" in the length and width. The fourth one shrunk by only a tiny bit less - and that was the swatch that was machine washed and hung to dry.
The only problem is that the steam function on my home iron is on the fritz. There is no way I want to steam press a 4 yard piece of fabric with my old home iron. As an early Christmas/merry unbirthday gift to myself, I bought a Consew Gravity Feed iron. It should be here on Friday (leave it to me to make a purchase during a holiday week). Because I really wanted to work on the dress over the holiday weekend, I will probably pretreat this length with my existing iron. I may even forego the spin cycle altogether and let the fabric generate it's own steam. One of my swatches used the soaking wet method and shrunk as much as it did in the dryer without changing the appearance or hand of the fabric.
So it looks like I have a plan B after all! But I can't wait until my new iron arrives, I've been putting it off for far too long!!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment