How to wash jeans so they shrink

Jeans that are sold in mar­kets and stores can quick­ly lose their orig­i­nal appear­ance. Often they stretch and become too big for the wear­er or look ugly after just a few socks and wash­es. In such a sit­u­a­tion, you can either buy a new thing, or try to make the jeans sit down, or take them in. It is good that den­im has the prop­er­ty to shrink under the influ­ence of high tem­per­a­tures. Using this qual­i­ty in prac­tice, you can make the trousers sit down and return to their orig­i­nal shape. In this arti­cle, we will look specif­i­cal­ly at wash­ing and dry­ing meth­ods that will help reduce the size of your favorite piece of cloth­ing by one or two sizes.

Types of fabrics from which jeans are sewn

Before wash­ing den­im pants to shrink, check what fab­ric they are made from. Not all fab­rics can be washed at high tem­per­a­tures, not all of them shrink after such expo­sure. Find out what fab­ric was used to sew your item, you can, by exam­in­ing the tag or by the appear­ance of the gar­ment:

1. Den­im is dis­tin­guished by the fact that it has a very bright col­or on the front side of the prod­uct and an almost com­plete­ly white col­or on the wrong side. These jeans can be washed in hot water in the hope that they will shrink.

2. Trousers made of soft cot­ton mate­r­i­al, as a rule, are dyed the same from the front side and from the inside. To make them sit down, you will have to make a lot of effort, since such a fab­ric is dif­fi­cult to shrink.

3. Jeans made from stretchy fab­ric for excel­lent stretch. The mate­r­i­al con­tains lycra fibers, which react very poor­ly to high tem­per­a­tures. After such wash­ing, they can stretch even more, as the fab­ric will lose its elas­tic­i­ty.

4. Jeans made of light and thin cham­bray fab­ric should also not be washed in hot water. If you use oth­er meth­ods of shrink­age, the prod­uct may become small­er not only in width, but also in length.

Know­ing the prop­er­ties of the fab­ric from which your jeans are made, you can choose the best way to reduce the size of the prod­uct. Remem­ber that you can only wash in hot water jeans made of a dense, durable fab­ric like cot­ton or den­im with at least 70% cot­ton.

How to wash jeans in a washing machine so that they sit down

The sequence of actions in this case is as sim­ple as pos­si­ble:

1. We load into the drum of the wash­ing machine only the prod­uct that we want to reduce in size. We add pow­der, con­di­tion­er that soft­ens things, no.

2. We set the wash­ing pro­gram with the high­est water tem­per­a­ture (90 degrees).

3. After wash­ing, turn on the spin cycle at max­i­mum speed.

4. Dry the prod­uct in an auto­mat­ic dry­er at the high­est tem­per­a­ture. If you do not have such a house­hold appli­ance, dry the thing, if pos­si­ble, out­side, under hot sun­light. If it’s cold out­side, you can dry your jeans with a radi­a­tor or a hairdry­er.

This is a fair­ly effec­tive method that helps to reduce the size of clothes. But the fab­ric can shed due to a streak in hot water, so before the pro­ce­dure you need to make sure that a per­ma­nent dye was used in the man­u­fac­ture of the item. To do this, you need to immerse the edge of the leg in hot water for 20 min­utes. If the water does not begin to turn blue, then the jeans should not shed dur­ing wash­ing.

Boiling is used to shrink jeans

This method is used only in cas­es where the own­er of the thing is 100% sure that the fab­ric of the prod­uct will with­stand such a pro­ce­dure, and the paint will not fade. It is strict­ly for­bid­den to boil very dark prod­ucts, as well as trousers made of thin, elas­tic fab­ric, dec­o­rat­ed with rhine­stones, stripes, embroi­deries, oth­er­wise the whole decor will be lost.

Boil­ing a thing in order for it to sit down is not dif­fi­cult. To do this, you need a capa­cious pot and water, as well as a gas or elec­tric stove. We put the con­tain­er on the burn­er, put the jeans in it, add so much water so that it com­plete­ly cov­ers the prod­uct, bring to a boil. Then we cook the prod­uct for anoth­er 30 min­utes, then care­ful­ly, so as not to scald, take it out with tongs and put it in a con­tain­er with cold water. When the trousers have cooled, we take them out, wring them out, dry them in the sun or in any oth­er way.

Features of washing jeans made of thin or elastic fabric

If the jeans are made of thin, stretch mate­r­i­al, then wash­ing in very hot water, spin­ning at max­i­mum speed is con­traindi­cat­ed for them. There­fore, shrink­age is car­ried out using hand wash­ing. How it’s done:

1. The water is heat­ed to a tem­per­a­ture of 50–60 degrees, it should be hot, but mod­er­ate­ly so that there is no dis­com­fort when wash­ing with rub­ber gloves.

2. Water is poured into a basin or oth­er con­tain­er for wash­ing, a lit­tle wash­ing pow­der is added, but it is bet­ter to use shav­ings from laun­dry soap.

3. The thing is turned inside out and immersed in soapy water for 20 min­utes.

4. Wash the prod­uct in the usu­al way, rins­ing is car­ried out in cold water. In order for the item to shrink, it is rec­om­mend­ed to rinse in water with the low­est pos­si­ble tem­per­a­ture, so you can add ice from the freez­er to it.

You need to dry the prod­uct on a hor­i­zon­tal sur­face, for exam­ple, on a table on the bal­cony or plac­ing it across the dry­er rails.

How to shrink a product according to a figure

There is a some­what orig­i­nal way to make your jeans fit your fig­ure — take a bath in them. This is not real­ly a wash as no pow­der or soap is used, so the method is applied to clean clothes. The bot­tom line is that you need to fill the bath with as much water as you need so that its lev­el reach­es the person’s waist when he is in a sit­ting posi­tion. The water should be hot, but not scald­ing. The own­er of the jeans puts them on, fas­tens them, sits in the bath and sits for 20–30 min­utes until the water starts to cool. Then you need to get up, with­out tak­ing off your trousers, squeeze the fab­ric with your hands as far as pos­si­ble. After that, it is nec­es­sary to stay in jeans until they dry com­plete­ly. To speed up the process, you can take a walk under the hot sun (in sum­mer) or stand (do not sit, oth­er­wise your knees will stretch out) near the radi­a­tor (in win­ter). Jeans after such a pro­ce­dure should sit down, but this effect will not last long, it will last until the next wash. Also, as you wear it, after sev­er­al cycles of putting on / tak­ing off, the thing will grad­u­al­ly stretch.

Alternate between cold and hot water

Pre­pare two laun­dry con­tain­ers. Pour hot water into one (60–90 degrees depend­ing on the type of fab­ric), into the oth­er — very cold, it is pos­si­ble with ice. Fold your trousers so that it is con­ve­nient to move them from pelvis to pelvis. Put first in hot water for 5 min­utes, then in ice water for the same peri­od of time. Han­dle the item with tongs so as not to burn your­self, use rub­ber gloves to pro­tect the skin of your hands. If pos­si­ble, wring out the thing with the sec­ond tongs so that hot and cold water do not mix when shift­ing from basin to basin. The pro­ce­dure for alter­nat­ing water is repeat­ed 5–7 times until the tem­per­a­ture of the liq­uid in the con­tain­ers is main­tained.

Do not rinse out the soap

This method will help reduce the size of the trousers, but not for long. After the first wear, they will stretch again. But in case of emer­gency, it can be used. The essence of the method is that jeans must first be washed in the usu­al way, then put in a basin of water and dis­solve 3–4 table­spoons of grat­ed laun­dry soap in it. Immerse the jeans in a soapy solu­tion for 5 min­utes, remove, wring out with your hands, dry with­out rins­ing. A solu­tion of laun­dry soap will strength­en the fibers of the fab­ric, the thing will sit down, and for some time it will not stretch. At the same time, nat­ur­al laun­dry soap will not harm the tis­sue or skin of the legs, with which it will come into con­tact dur­ing wear.

There is anoth­er method that helps to restore the orig­i­nal appear­ance of stretched trousers for a short time — impreg­na­tion of the fab­ric with fab­ric soft­en­er. There is no guar­an­tee of suc­cess in this case, but you can try this alter­na­tive. So, the algo­rithm of actions:

1. Take 1 part fab­ric soft­en­er and 3 parts water. You can take 1 and 3 glass­es, as there should be a lot of solu­tion.

2. Pour the solu­tion into a spray bot­tle, lay the jeans on the table, spray the liq­uid along the entire length. The item must be com­plete­ly sat­u­rat­ed with the solu­tion.

3. We take a hair dry­er, set the max­i­mum tem­per­a­ture, dry the trousers.

This method is more suit­able for thin and stretchy fab­rics than for den­im and cot­ton. The dis­ad­van­tage of the method is that stains may appear on the fab­ric, but the thing can always be washed if the result does not suit you.

How to dry jeans properly

How to wash a thing in order to achieve at least a short-term shrink­age effect, we told. But to fix the result, you also need to dry it prop­er­ly. Here are some tips:

1. Do not dry on a line or dry­er bar. Wet fab­ric is heavy, under its own weight, the prod­uct stretch­es even more.

2. Do not put a ter­ry tow­el under the item so that the mois­ture is absorbed faster. The best option for dry­ing is free air cir­cu­la­tion from all sides of the prod­uct.

3. Dry­ing with an iron is not the best option. Dur­ing the move­ment of the “sole” of the iron, the fibers are stretched in dif­fer­ent direc­tions, so the shrink­age effect may dis­ap­pear.

The best option for dry­ing trousers so that they sit down and keep their shape for at least a few days is to use a spe­cial dry­er. Hot air will cause the prod­uct to decrease by 1–2 sizes.

Conclusion

If your favorite jeans have stretched out on your knees or even lost their shape, do not despair and get ready to buy new clothes, you can still try to revive them. Wash­ing at high tem­per­a­ture, alter­nat­ing cold and hot water, dry­ing in a hor­i­zon­tal posi­tion — these are the ways that will help the trousers to sit down, and you — to look 100% in them.