I know that putting new clothes in a dryer causes them to shrink, but does a similar effect occur when washing clothes in hot water? If I wanted to minimize shrinkage should I only use cold? As far as I know only color is affected by water temperature, but I have not performed any experiments to validate that position.
No experiences with clothes shrinking in hot water?
From the title, I thought this thread was going to be about another kind of shrinkage.
As for clothes, they are more likely to shrink in hot water, although plenty of things won’t shrink (at least not enough for me to notice) even with hot water. TLC’s How Stuff Works has a guide to shrinking different kinds of fabric, for those who want to do so deliberately: http://tlc.howstuffworks.com/home/how-to-shrink-clothes.htm
Thanks for the pointer to the article. It does seem to indicate that hot water plays at least some role in the process. For older clothes, it appears mandatory.
I actually had some older items that I wanted to shrink down, but I was not sure if it was worth possibly fading the color by using hot water. I guess that is what I need to do.
It depends on the material. Denim: not a lot of shrinkage and it’s temporary. Angora wool: congratulations, your knit sweater now fits a doll and it will never be woman-sized again.
That’s called felting (pictures of felted animals )
Some wool yarns, in fact, are designed on purpose to felt up like crazy in the washing machine, so knitters can make felted slippers, hats, purses, cell phone cases, or whatever else is in fashion this season.
In general, modern fabric processing makes the finished fabric or finished garment less likely to shrink than they used to. Natural fibers processed by older methods will shrink to various degrees in hot water. Synthetics will shrink less, but the shrinking may be uneven and cause puckering or permanent wrinkles.