Do you like what I turned this vintage dress into? I do… like, a lot. The only thing I didn’t like was that the dress STUNK, like a lot. So I washed it with Coca-Cola and now it doesn’t smell any more! Unfortunately, I threw it in the dryer and it SHRUNK (like, a lot)! See those belt loops? They were up by my armpits. And those sleeves? Yeah, they were suddenly 3/4 sleeves.
Luckily, I was able to “un-shrink” it! Here’s how I did it:
- First, I soaked the dress in warm/hot water for ten minutes.
- While it was soaking, I gathered a couple towels and laid one out on the table.
- After 10 minutes, I gently squeezed out excess water and laid the sweater on top of the towel.
- I rolled up the sweater in the towel to get out some more water – you have to do this quickly though because you want to do the next step while the sweater is still warm.
- Finally, I gently stretched the sweater back into shape. I even put the sweater on (carefully!) to make sure it would fit after my “un-shrinking”
- Let it dry flat and you’re done!
Let me know how this works out for you!
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That is called blocking, although it never occurred to me to use it to unshrink a wool garment — it’s usually a finishing technique for knitted wool garments, and you pin it to something to ensure that it keeps its shape as it dries.:)
thanks for the great tip!
your sweater jacket turned out very nicely!!
[...] love. she also found a way to “un-shrink” her sweater after a mishap in the dryer, so click here to read her tips for saving shrunken clothes. thanks, [...]