Mourning the loss of my linen pants
In: 291
This used to be a thing. They want to spend the minimum possible on manufacturing and don’t care about quality anymore. Cheap clothes last a lot less than quality garments so they can sell a lot more too.
I always pre-wash my fabrics and then go ahead and sew my own clothes. (And it pretty much ruined buying clothes off the rack for me)
Wool is not meant to be shrunk. It will become hard and felted over time if not properly cared for
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Answer:
Wool does not technically shrink. It felts. Like a felt fedora, that is what happens to wool when it is heavily agitated. Hot water, drying, and even just machine washing wool causes felting if not dons correctly. As the fibers bind as they felt together, the area “shrinks”. The fibers themselves are being agitated and bound together, but not technically “shrinking” in size.
Proper care won’t shrink wool in the same way as cotton. You just have to care for wool properly.
Shrunk cotton has a much harder and harsher texture, and less play. Preshrinking it and then making a shirt out of it would make one nasty abrasive shirt.
shrinking wool changes it’s characteristics. It would become more dense, heavier per unit after shrinking than before shrinking. Colors can run and woven fabrics can become ‘felt’.
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Everyone is saying it’s cost-cutting, but a lot of the time you really just are not supposed to wash certain types of fabric in hot water/ in a modern washing machine. The wash detrimentally changes the properties of the fabric beyond just shrinking it, no matter when it’s washed.
Delicate linen is usually used in clothes for hot weather, it breathes really well and can absorb a lot of sweat for it’s weight, and it’s very strong so you can use very thin fabric.
When your pants shrunk in the wash, it’s because the hot water and agitation made the linen fibers tighten up, which takes away the breathability of the fabric and weakens the fibers. So what’s the point of using linen at that point?
That’s what you do when you sew. But mass produced clothing isn’t pre shrunk. Good linen clothing had to be be dry cleaned. Sorry for your loss.😉
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