You need to test wash your lace in the same state as it will be used on the garment.
You can at least partly pre-shrink the lace by putting a very damp cloth over it and steaming it with a hot iron using little pressure. Also pre shrink the fabric or garment. Sew the sample of lace to the fabric in the same way as it will be in the finished design, ie. appliquéd on or inserted with the fabric removed from behind it. Now you can wash and iron it in the way you will the garment, but the fabric will be supporting the edges of the lace and mean you are more able to return or even stretch it to its original size as you iron. I find this is easier to do if you iron the garment damp, rather than drying it first and then using a steam iron. You may find that it is worth going test strips in different threads as well as the DMC (presumably) perlé 12, as they may react differently to washing. Jacquie in Lincolnshire. Sent from my iPhone On 12 Sep 2011, at 20:58, Donna Fousek <ibal...@yahoo.com> wrote: > I know this will not help you Vila, but it does bring up a good question on > how we are going to use the lace we make. I was thinking of inserting some > stripe lace onto a summer top to cover up a stain that I ware around > causally. My husband does the wash (No he does not fold) and he pit everything > into the washer and dryer unless I put it aside for hand washing. So it would > have to pass his standard. I did a test to see what would happen with dmc > cotton 12 the wash. I choose the cotton because the top is cotton. After doing > a 8 inch test strip sample of the pattern then I measured it. Height and > width. The srinkage was more heigth than width. Shrinkage was over 10% in > heigth and around 8% in width. I was a little suprised that the shrinkage was > not uniform. I tried ironing it out and it look ok but not as good as the pre > washing. I thought of preshrinking my thread before hand. Have not tried it as > of yet but will. Thinking it would be > better than adjusting the pattern. > > Donna near Chicago where fall is > showing its starting to come. > > From: vila <v...@warpedandwonderful.com> > To: > lace@arachne.com > Sent: Monday, September 12, 2011 12:08 PM > Subject: [lace] to > wash or not to wash? > > Hello all > > I have a question about washing lace. As a > weaver, I wash all of my woven pieces as part of the finishing process. > Depending on the article this can be a gentle swish in the sink or a complete > wash and dry cycle in by machine. > > Is it a common practice to wash a > finished piece of lace or not? I can see some things never being washed, but > other will probably need to be washed sooner or later. > > What brings up the > question, is that I'm going to weave a piece of linen fabric for the center of > the linen edging I did. The fabric will be be washed after weaving to be sure > it doesn't shrink later and pucker the lace. I did gently wash the lace and > it changed quite a bit. A good press will make it look better again, but I > now wish I had not washed the lace and took my chances of puckering later. Or > maybe not.... > > > Vila Cox > Warped & Wonderful - Handwoven Treasures > http://www.warpedandwonderful.com > > - > To unsubscribe send email to > majord...@arachne.com containing the line: > unsubscribe lace y...@address.here. > For help, write to > arachne.modera...@gmail.com. Photo site: > http://community.webshots.com/user/arachne2003 > > - > To unsubscribe send email to majord...@arachne.com containing the line: > unsubscribe lace y...@address.here. For help, write to > arachne.modera...@gmail.com. Photo site: > http://community.webshots.com/user/arachne2003 - To unsubscribe send email to majord...@arachne.com containing the line: unsubscribe lace y...@address.here. For help, write to arachne.modera...@gmail.com. Photo site: http://community.webshots.com/user/arachne2003
