Caring for Fabric

Caring for Fabric Before prewashing any fabric, a quick zigzag stitch or serge will keep the edges from fraying.

If you get fabric from a craft or fabric store without care and content labels, make your own labels to sew into finished garments. Make a fabric care label with fabric sheets made for your computer printer and sew into the garment.

 Don’t store your fabric in direct sunlight. Sunlight can fade the showing fabric and leave you with multi-tonal fabric.

To protect fabric from dust or smoke, store neatly folded stacks in plastic bins or bags. Preshrink fabric before you store it. To test how a special fabric reacts to different pre-treatments (such as silk), create several small swatches and treat them differently. For example, press one with a press cloth and one without a press cloth.

If you are covering outdoor cushions or pillows with new fabric, use inexpensive plastic shower curtain liners to first cover the cushions with a waterproof layer before covering with the new fabric. You can also do this with purchased newly purchased items. This will reduce mildew.