Keeping Your Knitwear Alive

How to Care for your Wooly Wardrobe

I love knitwear! Always have. Cosy. Fluffy. Warm. Blankety.

I can never have enough of it!

As incredible and useful as it is to own some great woollen pieces, it is equally annoying to care for them.

Shrunken is the most painful state. Eaten by moths – heartbreaking.

Today’s sending it all about how to avoid prematurely parting with your favourite woollens and how to extend their lives.

To understand what type of care your jumper requires, you need to establish what fabric you are dealing with.

Not all knitwear is created equal.

Natural fibres:

• wool, cashmere, cotton, silk.

  
  

Semi-synthetic:

• viscose, modal, and lyocell, rayon.

  
  

Synthetic knitwear:

• polyester, acrylic.

  
  

Blended knitwear:

Here anything goes:

• natural only blends: cotton-cashmere, silk- cashmere,

• natural-synthetic: cotton-polyester, wool-polyester,

• natural – semi-synthetic: wool-viscose

…and so on.

One thing to remember: the more natural the content, the more tlc it will require.

Reading the care label is necessary!

Washing

Whether your cardigan is made of polyester or cashmere, it’s best to wash it in cold water.

You have two options here:

A) hand-wash using a mild detergent (like this one)

B) in a washing machine on a gentle or hand wash cycle, turned inside out (or in a mesh laundry bag); again, using mild detergent.

When it comes to a washing machine use, although your synthetic garment might not suffer in this process, the natural fabric one might.

From experience, it all depends on the quality (and age) of your washing machine, and the setting that you choose! Some of the machines I used were fine, some of them were cruel, turning my clothes into doll’s outfits, even on a hand wash cycle.

You can absolutely take your knitwear to dry cleaners. Since you are not supposed to wash it regularly, it might be your best option. Still, I find that often my cashmere items smell a bit funny after dry cleaning and I prefer to handwash them at home.

Additionally, dry-cleaning is becoming more and more expensive and might not be financially sustainable, particularly in colder seasons.

TIP: if you decide to hand wash your woollens, make sure you lay them flat on a clean towel and reshape gently. Do not hang them as that might misshape your clothing.

This applies to machine washed items too.

Storing

The main rule here is simple: fold, don’t hang (to prevent stretching!)

If you have no space for folded items, you can smartly fold your jumpers over a hanger – three ways here:

Pilling and Maintenance

Pilling on natural fabrics is inevitable, but it can easily be dealt with.

There is no need to part with your beloved jumper because it is covered in tiny balls. Simply shave them off to restore the smooth texture.

I use this shaver and it’s very inexpensive. You can go fancy too.

Also, I steam my jumpers – not only to remove any creasing that might have occurred, but also to reinvigorate the fibres, remove odour and kill any bacteria in-between washes (remember: knitwear doesn't need frequent washing!)

The steamer I use is great and it was inexpensive too: you can find it here.

Both shaving and steaming have breathed new life into my knitwear – I have owned some of my jumpers for years now and they still look incredible.

Removing stains and protecting your knitwear against moths are essential, but they are a different matter altogether, requiring a bit more attention. Stay tuned for another post on that!

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