Not Just Washing

Climbing onto my soap box...

These are Color Catchers.  Today I've been wet finishing a load of red scarves and shawls.  I knew beforehand that the weft on these items bled copious amounts of fugitive colour and it needed to be dealt with in the wet finishing.

If all I had done was wash this load of cloth, there would have been a significant amount of dye left in it and any friend or customer who owned one might have had a really nasty surprise when they tossed it into their laundry.

So no, wet finishing isn't 'just washing'. 

Wet finishing means that if there is fugitive dye, it is - as much as humanly possible - removed.

Wet finishing allows the yarns to shift to areas of least resistance so that weave structures like lace weave, deflected double weave, honeycomb, waffle weave and others will develop to their finished state.

Textiles that rely on shrinkage differential will not look anything like they will coming off the loom and after wet finishing.

Wet finishing may be much harsher in terms of water temperature or agitation than simple washing.

Other processes such as a good hard press (which these scarves and shawls will receive tomorrow) or brushing (to raise a nap, usually on wool) are applied during wet finishing.

Once the web has been brought to it's 'finished' state, every rule you ever learned about cleaning that textile kicks into play, especially for wool.

These shawls and scarves went through a standard wash cycle of 8 minutes with gentle agitation and spin, warm water wash, cold water rinse.  I used four rinses.  The three Color Catchers on the left went through two rinses and the wash cycle.  The medium coloured one in the middle went through three rinses.  The two on the right went through two rinse cycles.

The washing instructions that I will attach to the items will read "Wash separately in warm water, dry until damp, press if desired."  Quite a different process than the wet finishing I just applied.

For more info on wet finishing...

(to see the entire photo, click on the photo and open in another tab)