If you really want to know about properties and care of various fabrics,
get
a college textiles textbook. It will have all the technical details. You
could look for a used one on alibris or abebooks.
I took a Textile class in graduate school. Everything you wanted to know
about fabric! Great class. The text we used was _Textiles_ (eighth edition)
by Sara J. Kadolph and Anna L. Langford. I'm sure there are lots of copies
floating around in bookstores or on the internet. I think there is a new
edition coming out this year.
One of the things I learned in my studies was that legally, clothing
manufacturers have to put a care label on their garments, and they have to
test the garment in what ever method they recommend. For *most* garments,
regardless of fiber content, the easiest and cheapest route is to label the
garment "Dry Clean Only". This way they are not responsible for the poor
results if the garment is cleaned some other way, and they have to spend
very little money researching other cleaning methods. Basically---"dry clean
only" is the default setting on care labels.
I've bought plenty of garments made from washable fabrics that had dry clean
only in the label. I rarely dry clean *anything* but hand wash or machine
wash on gentle instead.
As for the original question-- Yes, if you prewash and pre-shrink material,
you should be all set, as long as you use the same method to wash the
finished garment. In other words--don't wash the yardage on gentle in cold
water, then wash the garment in a regular cycle with warm or hot and expect
the garment to be unchanged! ;-)
Denise
Iowa
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