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Wet-finishing woven pieces

Wet-finishing is the first time your weaving meets water. Often, the processes involved may be harsher than normal washing. lots of things can happen

  • Colour may change a little (become brighter) if the yarn has lots of spinning oil.
  • wool (particularly woolen-spun) may full/felt a bit. This makes threads less prominent, the pattern a bit more blurry, and the fabric more compact, thicker and denser.
  • things will probably shrink a bit
  • you can brush woolen cloth to “raise the nap” - make a fuzzy surface

If you have yarns with strong colours, wash them with something that can help catch any dye leaking -colour catcher sheets or something. If dye comes out, don’t soak the thing rather rinse it lots of times until no more dye comes out.

protein fibres (wool)

Soak wool in really hot water, but be really careful not to agitate so it doesn’t felt. For a first wash, you might want something like washing up liquid or Orvus paste (horse shampoo??) - a lot of resources refer to american brands and products, but I’m in the UK! Soak for 20-30 minutes, then rinse in water of the same temperature. Optionally you might want to do another soak at the same temperature for 20-30 minutes, this time with some hair conditioner. Then rinse in the same temperature again, and air dry flat.

fulling

If you do actually want the thing to felt/full a bit, you’ll need to do agitation. Add a little bit of something like washing up liquid, to act as a surfactant, to break up surface tension of things like spin oil.

  • Agitate to saturate the fibres, sort of like kneading bread dough. You can rinse the detergent out before you full, or leave it in.
  • take out some excess water by squishing the cloth in a towel.
  • full the cloth, either by doing something like kneading, or literally throwing the cloth repeatedly at a table.
  • Check on the process by trying to poke a fingernail through the cloth, you shouldn’t be able to displace the threads and get through.

you can make an on-loom fringe and then full it into place. The technique is something like a leno twist, held in place with a cotton thread which is later removed

brushing

You can wet-brush straight after fulling to raise a long nap, or let it dry then spritz with water later and brush to raise a shorter nap. You can only do this if the cloth is really stable, or you’ll pull threads. Note that this will elongate the cloth in the direction you are brushing, do it in lots of directions to get back to the shape you started with. If it’s a scarf, do your final brush starting at the midpoint and working to each end.

cellulose fibres (cotton)

For cotton, your fabric has to be as stable as it will be on the loom, there’s not a lot of change to happen in finishing, as compared to wool. The threads will swell a bit when wet, to even things out. You can agitate, do this more if it’s a weave structure like lace or waffle with a lot of shape.

Soak in hot water, maybe with a dye catcher for 20-30 minutes. If the thing doesn’t need to be absorbent, you can give it another soak in fabric softener, then rinse with hot water. Don’t do this for towels though! Tumble dry or air dry flat.

Linen will be really stiff until finished. Some people will tell you to use boiling water on linen, or move it from hot to ice and back. You can compress it too, to give a shinier finish. You can do this with a rolling pin or any kind of big round thing, do small hard rolling on the cloth. Usually do this when the cloth is nearly dry.

Silk you can press with an iron or tshirt press, while the cloth is still damp. This will make the cloth much shinier, and also much more drapey. If you’re using an iron, use it in one place for some seconds, with a lot of pressure. Overlap, and do at least 2 passes on each side. Then, iron/polish/burnish the whole lot - rub the iron in circles with lots of pressure to even everything out. This takes forever, but gives a really good finish.

Sources

https://learn.longthreadmedia.com/courses/take/wet-finishing-for-weavers-with-laura-fry/texts/8253646-what-you-will-learn, course by this person https://laurafry.com/ who wrote this book https://www.blurb.co.uk/b/8516297-magic-in-the-water