I've heard two schools of thought on fulling:
1) Pre-wash like you would after you make the garment. If you are going to always wash cold and warm dry then pre-wash cold and warm dry. The wool will full but only so much but that's ok as you are always going to wash it this way.
School 2) Wash hot, rinse cold and dry hot. This will full the wool to the max. School 2 makes better sense to me.
Question 1: Will the wool shrink differently if after using method 2 I wash the resulting garment differently? Like in cold with a cool dry or a hang dry?
Question 2: How many washings and dryings do you do to full the wool. 2? 3?
Question 3: What do you use in the wash? Some advocate using real saundry soap over detergent. Does this make any difference?
Question 4: Does changing the PH or salinity of the water (adding salt or vinegar) make anny difference. I've done this to stabalize the colors but does it make a diff in fulling?
I usually do 2 cycles of hot, cold, hot. But I have found that sometimes I still get shrinkage later. Depends on the wool I guess.
On fulling wool...
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kass
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I'm in school 2, Parlan. Though if I were washing some cashmere for a modern outfit, I'd probably not wash it at all or wash like School 1.
To answer question 1: If you use Method 2, washing your wool garment in cold water later will not shrink it. Wool only shrinks when "shocked" -- i.e. when you go from cold to hot or hot to cold. So if you've done hot to cold already, you've shocked your wool and washing in cold, hot, or whathaveyou will not change that.
Of course neither method is perfect. You will get a little shrinkage every time you wash your wool. But it's like the shrinkage you get every time you wash your jeans -- they stretch out the first time you wear them.
To answer question 2: I do it once. I can't be bothered to mess around with it enough to wash it two or three times. But it sure wouldn't hurt.
To answer question 3: I use baby shampoo. Wool is hair. Baby shampoo is very inert and it's what I was taught to use on silk, which is also chemically similar to hair. Dawn dishwashing detergent is what we use on raw fleeces to get rid of the lanolin. But washing woven wool, you don't have to deal with grease.
To answer question 4: Not that I'm aware. Changing the pH of the water may make your soap work more effectively (especially if you have hard water) but pH and salinity have nothing to do with the fulling process.
Just a note on semantics: what we're doing in the washing machine isn't really fulling our wool. Fulling, as someone mentioned in another thread, involves soaping up the wool and beating it, like the felting process except that felting is done before the wool is woven (felt is not a woven fabric -- it's really a big matted mass of wool fleece sliced into rectangles). What we're doing is the best we can do to approximate fulling after the commercially-made fabric gets into our hot little hands.
Your results will vary based on the wool you have. Some wools are pre-shrunk. That usually means they are shocked in the thread stage before it's woven into fabric. This kind of wool won't full and won't shrink either. Some wool is partially shocked so it doesn't shrink much, but it still shrinks enough to be able to leave a raw edge unsewn and have it not ravel. Some wool is really stretchy and will shrink and thicken ALOT. This is the stuff you'll wish you shocked because your new cote just turned into a child's dress and you didn't even have the machine on hot.
Generally, I spot clean my wool garments and never throw them in the machine after they're made. I wash my undergarments after every event. But my wool and silk garments generally don't get washed at all.
I full my wool so I don't have to hem it because none of the extant garments I've studied had hems. That's my motivation.
Kass
To answer question 1: If you use Method 2, washing your wool garment in cold water later will not shrink it. Wool only shrinks when "shocked" -- i.e. when you go from cold to hot or hot to cold. So if you've done hot to cold already, you've shocked your wool and washing in cold, hot, or whathaveyou will not change that.
Of course neither method is perfect. You will get a little shrinkage every time you wash your wool. But it's like the shrinkage you get every time you wash your jeans -- they stretch out the first time you wear them.
To answer question 2: I do it once. I can't be bothered to mess around with it enough to wash it two or three times. But it sure wouldn't hurt.
To answer question 3: I use baby shampoo. Wool is hair. Baby shampoo is very inert and it's what I was taught to use on silk, which is also chemically similar to hair. Dawn dishwashing detergent is what we use on raw fleeces to get rid of the lanolin. But washing woven wool, you don't have to deal with grease.
To answer question 4: Not that I'm aware. Changing the pH of the water may make your soap work more effectively (especially if you have hard water) but pH and salinity have nothing to do with the fulling process.
Just a note on semantics: what we're doing in the washing machine isn't really fulling our wool. Fulling, as someone mentioned in another thread, involves soaping up the wool and beating it, like the felting process except that felting is done before the wool is woven (felt is not a woven fabric -- it's really a big matted mass of wool fleece sliced into rectangles). What we're doing is the best we can do to approximate fulling after the commercially-made fabric gets into our hot little hands.
Your results will vary based on the wool you have. Some wools are pre-shrunk. That usually means they are shocked in the thread stage before it's woven into fabric. This kind of wool won't full and won't shrink either. Some wool is partially shocked so it doesn't shrink much, but it still shrinks enough to be able to leave a raw edge unsewn and have it not ravel. Some wool is really stretchy and will shrink and thicken ALOT. This is the stuff you'll wish you shocked because your new cote just turned into a child's dress and you didn't even have the machine on hot.
Generally, I spot clean my wool garments and never throw them in the machine after they're made. I wash my undergarments after every event. But my wool and silk garments generally don't get washed at all.
I full my wool so I don't have to hem it because none of the extant garments I've studied had hems. That's my motivation.
Kass