I need help with a blouse that shrank in the dryer!

amother

Fri, Sep 16 2011, 3:57 pm

I bought a cotton/rayon/nylon (40/20/20) button down shirt and washed it today for the first time.
It said on the washing directions to wash in cold water and tumble dry low. Somehow I meant to hang it to dry but instead placed it in the dryer LOL! By the time I went down to check on the load, it was totally dry but shrank so much I cannot wear it!
Not knowing what to do, I quickly placed it under cold running water, then tried to stretch it back to size and hung it now to dry.
Any other suggestions or shall I just wait to see what happens?
Your advice would be greatly appreciated.

Dolly Welsh

Fri, Sep 16 2011, 4:52 pm

Cotton shrinks some, but rayon shrinks a LOT. And frays. And wrinkles. I avoid it completely. Not sure about this stretching you are trying. Even without the dryer, it would have shrunk almost as much. Good luck. The blouse is probably going to a DD.

amother

Sun, Sep 18 2011, 12:53 am

So why would people buy anything rayon? Also, why does the label to say to wash it, if that will make it shrink? I'm so confused. Would it have helped to dry clean it instead?

shanie5

Sun, Sep 18 2011, 11:33 am

Heat shrinks things-not cold. So had you washed it in cold water, and hung it to dry it probably would not have shrunk.

My mom did that once with a sweater I asked my grandmother to knit for me. It was beautiful, I wore it once, and then it shrunk so badly that my sister who was about 5 at the time was able to wear it!

chippy

Sun, Sep 18 2011, 12:12 pm

I've never tried this before- but I've read that if you soak the garment in cold water and baby shampoo and hang it to dry- it should help stretch it out a little. If you try it, let me know how it turns out!

zaq

Sun, Sep 18 2011, 9:21 pm

Knitted garments can sometimes be stretched back by wetting and manually stretching, but woven garments are usually a dead loss once they shrink. For sure if it shrank several sizes, there's no way it's going back to its original size. You might get it to stretch a bit in the length if you wet it and hang it up soaking wet, so the weight of the water pulls on it, but that won't help you width-wise.

If you washed in cold water and dried on low according to the instructions, either return it to the store or write to the manufacturer and ask for a refund or replacement. If you dried it on warm or hot, then the fault is yours for not following instructions.

Rayon is a very comfortable fabric but a nightmare to care for. In theory it's washable, but in practice the color bleeds and fades in the wash, and the fabric wrinkles like mad. The fibers are very weak when wet so it's more likely than other fabrics to fray, shrink or stretch in the wash. It's really best to dry-clean rayon even though many rayon garments do say they're washable.