How to stretch a T‑shirt if it shrinks after washing

Did some­thing go wrong while wash­ing and now the new T‑shirt is too small? Let’s look at this issue from the point of view of phys­i­cal and chem­i­cal process­es. We will under­stand where we make mis­takes and how we can restore the size of things.

The prop­er­ty of shrink­age is typ­i­cal for fab­rics made from nat­ur­al fibers. Things made of poly­ester and oth­er syn­thet­ic fibers are the least sus­cep­ti­ble to tem­per­a­ture changes and the influ­ence of deter­gents.

Why do things shrink

Often such a sur­prise is pre­sent­ed by new things. Expo­sure to water and improp­er wash­ing results in a shrink­age effect, espe­cial­ly dur­ing the first wet treat­ment.

The reduc­tion in the size of things is due to the struc­ture of the fiber. So, cot­ton in its nat­ur­al posi­tion looks like a twist­ed spring. In the man­u­fac­ture of threads, the fibers are treat­ed with chem­i­cals to straight­en and stretch the fibers. And she is able to main­tain this state until the first oppor­tu­ni­ty. When the right con­di­tions arise, the fiber can twist again. Most often this hap­pens when the rec­om­mend­ed care rules are vio­lat­ed. In oth­er words, when extreme con­di­tions occur, the pro­tec­tive prop­er­ties of chem­i­cal treat­ment are lev­eled and the fiber tends to a nat­ur­al state.

Wool sits dif­fer­ent­ly. The down of ani­mals, which we call wool, has a scaly struc­ture on the sur­face. These horny struc­tures, sim­i­lar to fish scales, cov­er the entire sur­face of the pile. If the hair begins to wrin­kle and bend, the scales begin to bris­tle and cling to each oth­er. It is sim­i­lar to the rolling process. The size decreas­es due to the fact that the threads are fluffed up and then fixed in a com­pressed state.

And if you pour boil­ing water over the wool, then the struc­tur­al hair pro­tein ker­atin under­goes denat­u­ra­tion (an irre­versible reduc­tion), as a result of which the thing sits down very strong­ly and irrev­o­ca­bly.

Flax fiber has a spin­dle shape. It is smooth and strong, but also able to shrink, espe­cial­ly when treat­ed with hot water. Linen shrink­age is not crit­i­cal, and when ironed, the fiber returns to its orig­i­nal size.

The fab­rics that man­u­fac­tur­ers use to sew T‑shirts have a dif­fer­ent com­po­si­tion. They can be nat­ur­al, mixed and syn­thet­ic.

Mate­ri­als made from mixed fibers and syn­thet­ics are the least sus­cep­ti­ble to shrink­age. The fol­low­ing table shows the max­i­mum per­cent­age of shrink­age of fab­rics of dif­fer­ent types.

Fab­ric type	Shrink­age in length (%)	Shrink­age in width (%)
Cot­ton	3	2
Vis­cose	four	2
Silk	5	2
Wool	3.5	3.5
Kapron	1.5	1.5
Elas­tane	ten	ten

Now, by imag­in­ing what the fibers of knitwear look like and why they change length, we can deter­mine the appro­pri­ate wash­ing con­di­tions for such prod­ucts and under­stand how to return things to their orig­i­nal appear­ance.

Repairing a shrunken T‑shirt

Hav­ing stud­ied the expe­ri­ence of restor­ing shrunk­en items, hav­ing car­ried out exper­i­men­tal tests, we offer you effec­tive and safe ways to restore T‑shirts to their orig­i­nal sizes.

Vinegar treatment

Thanks to the acidic envi­ron­ment, cot­ton and wool fibers straight­en and become soft. If at the same time you start to eas­i­ly pull the mate­r­i­al in dif­fer­ent direc­tions, the nat­ur­al threads will stretch to their orig­i­nal state.

To process a cot­ton item, you need to soak it in vine­gar, moist­en­ing it with a spray bot­tle or moist­en­ing it with a sponge. A wet thing must be gen­tly stretched dur­ing the entire dry­ing time. After the T‑shirt has dried and fixed in the right con­di­tion, it can be washed in cold water to elim­i­nate the smell of vine­gar.

For a woolen, semi-woolen T‑shirt, you need to pre­pare an acid­i­fied solu­tion. To do this, dis­solve vine­gar in water in a ratio of 1: 2. Next, do the fol­low­ing manip­u­la­tions:

1. Place the item in a cold solu­tion for 30 min­utes.

2. While the knitwear is in the solu­tion, peri­od­i­cal­ly stretch it in dif­fer­ent direc­tions.

3. After the time has elapsed, remove the T‑shirt, wring out with­out twist­ing, and lay on a tow­el.

4. Give the jer­sey the cor­rect shape, and stretch to the desired size.

Soaking in ice water

For greater effi­cien­cy, you can put ice cubes in the water. This pro­cess­ing method is suit­able for all types of fab­ric. Wool, wool mix­ture, cot­ton, poly­cot­ton, linen — any fab­ric will not suf­fer from cold water, while the fibers will stretch, which will increase the size of the clothes.

Pour ice water into a basin and do this:

1. Immerse the shrunk­en item in the con­tain­er and leave it for 15–30 min­utes.

2. Take out the clothes and wring them out. Do not twist the prod­uct so as not to deform the fab­ric.

3. Hang the T‑shirt on a hang­er and even­ly pull the fab­ric in dif­fer­ent direc­tions, giv­ing it the desired size.

4. Peri­od­i­cal­ly repeat the stretch­ing pro­ce­dure until com­plete­ly dry.

5. Do not apply exces­sive force to avoid tear­ing the fab­ric.

Using vodka with turpentine and ammonia

We sug­gest using this method for cot­ton mod­els. Need to pre­pare:

1. 5 liters of warm water;

2. 3 art. l. ammo­nia;

3. 1 st. l. vod­ka;

4. 1 st. l. tur­pen­tine.

Then mix the ingre­di­ents and do the fol­low­ing:

1. Soak the T‑shirt in the solu­tion for 15–30 min­utes. Peri­od­i­cal­ly stretch the fab­ric in dif­fer­ent direc­tions.

2. If there is an odor, wash the item by hand.

3. Hang clothes on hang­ers and stretch even­ly.

4. Let the knitwear dry.

Hydrogen peroxide method

For nat­ur­al silk and woolen fab­rics, a method using hydro­gen per­ox­ide is suit­able. We warn you that you should care­ful­ly use this method for dyed things, since per­hy­drol has a bleach­ing effect.

Let’s pre­pare a solu­tion. To do this, in a ten-liter basin filled with warm water, pour 3 tbsp. l. hydro­gen per­ox­ide. Immerse clothes in a con­tain­er and wait 5 hours. After the time has elapsed, slight­ly wring out the T‑shirt and lay it out on a flat sur­face. If nec­es­sary, stretch and straight­en the jer­sey.

Stretching with an iron

This method restores cot­ton and linen well. But syn­thet­ics can be severe­ly deformed. For stretch­ing thin woolen items, we rec­om­mend using only steam treat­ment.

What we need to do:

1. Wet the shrunk­en thing, wring it out slight­ly and let the remain­ing water drain.

2. Put the damp T‑shirt on the iron­ing board and cov­er with gauze on top. You can not use gauze if the clothes do not have appli­ca­tions and ther­mal stick­ers.

3. Start iron­ing while press­ing the iron with one hand and stretch­ing the fab­ric with the oth­er.

4. Per­form uni­form stretch­ing of all parts in all direc­tions.

5. Hang the item on a coat hang­er to evap­o­rate any remain­ing mois­ture.

To restore a woolen or wool blend item, you need to use the iron as a steam gen­er­a­tor:

1. Lay the dry item on the iron­ing board.

2. While press­ing the but­ton on the steam gen­er­a­tor, process the fab­ric and then stretch it with both hands.

3. To fix the result, pin the T‑shirt to the iron­ing board with sta­tionery pins around the entire perime­ter.

4. Let things dry com­plete­ly and remove the nee­dles.

5. Slight­ly stretched fab­ric at the fix­a­tion points, steam again and align with your hand.

Stretching with the help of improvised objects

Our goal is to fix the stretched thing until it dries com­plete­ly. This will require items on which we can pull a shrunk­en T‑shirt.

What can suit us:

1. A pil­low or two. It depends on the size of the clothes.

2. The back of the chair. If your size is not too large, you can pull the clothes over the back of the chair. At the same time, rolled tow­els or pil­lows can be placed on 2 sides.

3. Dum­my. This option is more of an excep­tion than the norm. But, if you have it, take the oppor­tu­ni­ty and pull a shrunk­en thing on it. Pin the prod­uct on the bot­tom with pins.

4. Own body. In the sum­mer heat, you can apply this option. Be sure, after this, the reduced copy will sit per­fect­ly on you.

Be care­ful when pulling T‑shirts on hard objects. Because clothes can be acci­den­tal­ly torn or deformed.

Stretching with a load

In this way, you can increase the knitwear in length. For this method, weight­ing agents are required. Any thing can play this role: a kilo­gram dumb­bell, a fry­ing pan, a saucepan, an iron.

You need to do this:

1. Hang the item on your shoul­ders. Do not use light wire hang­ers as they may warp.

2. Col­lect the bot­tom of the prod­uct in a bun­dle, tie it with a rope and fix it with a knot.

3. Attach a weight to the free end of the rope.

4. If you need to stretch the sleeves, you should hang small loads from them in a sim­i­lar way.

5. Allow the T‑shirt to dry, release from the load and remove from the coat hang­er.

6. Iron the fab­ric to straight­en out any wrin­kles.

When using this method, be care­ful not to over­do it with the weight of the load. It may hap­pen that due to strong stretch­ing, the T‑shirt becomes too long.

Deformed hem and cuffs can be adjust­ed with a steam iron. For this you need:

1. Steam the wrin­kled and stretched area.

2. Align the fab­ric with your hands. Give it the desired shape and size, press­ing the fab­ric with your hand and straight­en­ing the folds.

3. Fix the result by press­ing the fab­ric with a hot iron. The tem­per­a­ture of the iron must be appro­pri­ate for the type of fab­ric.

Care rules that exclude clothing deformation

Often we do not assume that clothes can shrink, and of course we do not look at the labels that pre­scribe the rules of care. There­fore, as a result, we are forced to cor­rect the sit­u­a­tion using the above meth­ods.

To avoid dam­age to knitwear, we rec­om­mend that you read the fol­low­ing care instruc­tions:

1. Wash and spin accord­ing to the instruc­tions on the infor­ma­tion label.

2. Unless oth­er­wise stat­ed, wash cot­ton at 40 degrees. At this tem­per­a­ture, almost all types of ordi­nary con­t­a­m­i­nants are washed away.

3. Del­i­cate items should be spun at 500 rpm.

4. Wool wash­ing tem­per­a­ture — no more than 30 degrees Cel­sius. Hand pro­cess­ing with­out strong press­ing is wel­come.

5. Flax with­stands boil­ing. But in order to avoid shrink­age and shed­ding of the prod­uct, it is rec­om­mend­ed to wash things at a tem­per­a­ture of 40 degrees Cel­sius.

6. We rec­om­mend using liq­uid deter­gents for nat­ur­al fab­rics. Pow­der par­ti­cles are not always com­plete­ly washed out of the fab­ric. Because of this, knitwear becomes stiff and less elas­tic.

7. To even out the struc­ture of wool fibers, you can use fab­ric soft­en­er or hair con­di­tion­er. It glues the horny scales on the pile, so that the clothes become soft­er and do not roll.

Unpleas­ant sit­u­a­tions can be elim­i­nat­ed from your life if you fol­low sim­ple rules and tips. But even in the event of an unex­pect­ed shrink­age of your favorite thing, you should not pan­ic. You should apply one of the meth­ods we have giv­en to restore things.