To Wash or Not to Wash, That is the Question

Whenever I get a fabric that might be washable, I see if it is. There are some fabrics, polyesters spring to mind, that garment manufacturers will mark as “Dry clean only” even when there appears to be no reason to. If a polyester garment is tailored with lapels and welt pockets, etc., I always dry clean because who knows what will happen to all that nice structure if threw it in the wash. But with a simple polyester blouse, I try a hand wash and I haven’t had a problem so far.

But with natural fabrics, washing will almost always change the fabric, so the question is: Do you like the change? Silks, cottons, rayons, linens will soften, for example, their colors in prints may bleed, and wool knits will shrink a lot or a little. And you need to know what the dryer will do if you intend to line dry or lay flat. For the record, I now always dry-clean my woven wools because I buy them because I like them exactly as they are. And I tend to make tailored garments, and I want the structure to last.

So, you see here two experiments. In both cases, I cut a swatch precisely 4 inches square (not counting the selvedge on the gold woven). The top swatch is a med-weight wool double knit which shrunk only the tiniest bit in the width, under 1/8 of an inch, in the “hand-wash” cycle of my washing machine. So if I add the tiniest bit to the side seams of the tunic I have in mind, I am good, and I can wash it once made and lay flat to dry.

The gold woven is a blend of silk, wool, and cotton, and it shrunk a quarter inch in length, lost some of its body, and got surface abrasions. Not what I was after in a fabric to tailor. So, I sent off the yardage to the dry cleaners for a good pressing to shrink it before I sew it. If I make the jacket I have in mind (I am pondering a fitted evening jacket to wear with long, full black skirt, but my ponderings do evolve), it will be dry-cleaned as well.