How to Care for Your Crochet Items
Caring for your products include knowing how to wash them, dry them and how to block them. Washing and blocking your crocheted items soften the fibres.
How to Wash Your Crocheted Items
To wash your crocheted products it is advised to hand wash them in cool to lukewarm water. Soak them in water accompanied by hand washing powder or a wool wash.
You can gently massage them but do not wring your crocheted items as this will cause the item to stretch.
To dry your crocheted items Do Not Tumble Dry, simply put them in a towel and gently press the water out. Leave your crocheted items on a towel and dry them flat in the sun or under a fan.
Blocking Your Crocheted Items
Blocking is a method of making your garments straight or to relax the fibres. There are two methods to blocking your items which consist of wet blocking and steam blocking. To Block your item you need the following materials: Blocking Mats, Blocking Pins and a garment steamer.
Wet blocking:
Take your crocheted items and soak them in water or wash them. Gently squeeze the excess water out But Do Not Wring the garment.
Lay out your blocking mats (Children’s Playmats is an alternative) and start pinning your garment down. At this point you would want to take some extra time to ensure edges are straight, corners are well… corners and just making sure that the garment is nice, neat and straight.
Once pinned and is all in shape, you can leave your garment to dry over night or until dried. You can place a fan to blow on your garments to speed up the process.
Once dried, remove the pins, pack the mats away and there you have it! A beautiful blocked piece.
Steam Blocking:
Steam blocking is very similar to wet blocking but instead of wetting it, you are going to pin your crocheted item to your blocking mats, while it is dry, make sure the edges are straight and the corners are perfect corners.
Then grab your steamer, fill up your steamer and turn the steam on and start steaming. Make sure to steam just above your crocheted item making sure not to let the hot plate of the steamer to touch the yarn as you may burn it.
Keep steaming. Make sure to steam several times over seams, corners and edges to make sure they stay flat or keep its shape.
Once steamed and happy you can leave your item over night or until it is dried. Then you can remove the pins and pack your mats away and there you have it! You now have steamed blocked your crochet piece and it is looking perfect.
Cleaning the Pilling of Your Crocheted Items
You may notice over time of using your crocheted items that it might form pilling on the work, other known as fuzzies that come off the fibres of the yarn. This may result in the item looking messy, untidy and un-neat.
In order to get rid of this you can quickly run a lighter over the fibres or the crocheted item. This will not work for all fibres. Majority of my work is made from 100% Acrylic which is synthetic and inherently resistant to fire so when exposed to a flame, acrylic yarn melts rather than burns, resulting in the formation of a smooth residue.
Do Not Hold the lighter in one place. You may risk burning your crocheted item. Rather test a small piece of yarn or get the fibre content of the crocheted item and research how to care for that fibre.
For a safer method of getting rid of pulling you can trim the fibres with a pair of scissors or wash your crocheted items.