What do you all do with your wool fabric before you make something out of it? I've heard to wash it in the machine as many times as it takes to stop shrinking. Then, I can make something and it won't shrink any more if I wash it. The machine washing also fulls(sp?) the wool, making it thicker and more waterproof.

I'm fairly new to living history/reenactment, and I've only gotten a few pieces of wool, but two of the three pieces I've done this to have shrunk almost in half! The other piece only shrink 25% in length, though.

What do you do? Do yours shrink this much? Do you not wash it much or dryclean it?

Thanks!!

David

http://www.wolfeargent.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=20&t=000028

The other I think talks very briefly on the subject.

http://www.wolfeargent.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=7&t=000098

People generally wash it quite a bit to full it. How many times...I cannot say. I've never dry cleaned any of my LH clothing.

Gwen, AM, Nikki, and Dave Key deal a lot with clothing and have dealt with wool. They will probably be able to answer your questions with more technical accuracy than I.

Hope this helps a little.

Wash the "you know what" out of it.

About how much does most of your wool shrink?

One person I talked to said she had never had any wool shrink in half, and she said she washes it hot wash/cold rinse until it stops shrinking (like what I do). I think I may just be terribly unlucky

One specifically deals with what "Not to do" regarding Wool.

Hey! An alternative to the burn test! Soak wool in bleach and see if anything's left after a few hours.

on how much wool shrinks...I dont ahve as much experience as Gwen, etc, but in my hands, the amount wool shrinks in fulling depends on the density of the original weave.

ASSUMING you are starting with 100% wool (you'd be suprised how often I've bought stuff that was labelled "wool" and it ended up not being), heavy coat wool (the stuff they use for rag rugs, etc) will shrink hardly at all. More loosely woven stuff could easily shrink as much as half. I have seen one piece of very open weave shrink by more than that, when felted with soap and water by the feet of hundreds of demo kids .

If you have a lovely piece of wool and you dont want it to shrink, you can still use it, but resign yourself to having it be dry clean only. Even washing on cold will felt it some.

good luck!

--AM, who had fun freaking the local SCA crowd by blythely saying "of course I wash and dry my wool in the washing machine!" heh. You'da thought I told them I ate babies!

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*If it doesn't shrink at all it ain't wool, no matter what the label said or the salesperson told you. Different countries have different laws about what can be labelled wool; I regularly run across Italian fabrics in LA that have "100% wool suiting" woven into the selvage, and there is very little wool in it. In the US we interpret that selvage to mean "100% wool" suiting that is 100% wool, but what it actually means is "100% wool suiting" of undetermined wool content.

*Loosely woven wools can shrink impressively. I had a piece of loosely woven crepe that shrunk about 60%. I started out with enough for a gown and ended up with enough for a doublet. Great texture though!

*Unlike our forefathers, you always have the option of dry cleaning something you don't want to shrink. Some garments, like doublets and coats should never be washed anyway, so as to prevent garment distortion.

Hope that helps!