no problem at all with washing pure linen - reacts a lot like an untreated cotton - as long as you pre shrink it (washing machine, hottest setting) it'll be pretty much fine in normal washes.
obviously depends on the looseness of the weave, etc, (if a very loose weave, it may need shrinking twice), and may change some of the fabric properties, but I don't usually have a problem. washing is fine for a wool that's not heavily felted, or a superfine (one that doesn't have a very smooth, shiny, or napped surface). I'd do the same for wool as for linen - hot setting (not necessarily the hottest this time, due to the (often) greater shrinkage). the reason you can't wash (or steam / steam press for that matter), felted wools and superfines is that heat and moisture are used during the finishing processes. I've actually used steam to 'un-face' scraps of cloth from hainsworths for making medieval livery badges (or so that I can rip out the thread to do embroidery that has to match the garment cloth exactly). the resulting fabric looks and feels completely different. behaves differently too. anyway the end result being either that the wonderful finish that was the reason for buying the cloth in the first place is gone, or (depending on the precise type of cloth), the life of the fabric can be reduced by as much as 25 - 40 % (ish). sometimes you get both results. same applies to tumble drying, obviously, as you're introducing heat to cloth that's already moist! and of course, in the case of overcoatings etc, the water resistant properties will usually be either reduced, or just completely eliminated. debs (ps it really irritates me when customers wash heavily felted wools (hainsworths again) when I've told them not to, and they then wonder why it shrinks and loses its lustre - duh!) but as I said ordinary wool should be fine as long as you don't later wash it a hotter setting that the original wash. _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list [email protected] http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
