How to Wash your Hand Knit Clothing in 5 Easy Steps
Hand knit garments are delicate, and often times need to be hand washed.
It doesn’t have to be scary to wash your knitwear! These 5 easy steps will show you how to hand wash your delicates and your wool clothing.
*This post is Sponsored by Eucalan
I only recommend products I use myself and all opinions expressed here are my own.
Not all the yarn we use as knitters are super wash yarns, some yarns are hand wash only. If you’re not used to hand washing garments it can seem intimidating.
I can assure you, It’s easier than it looks.
I’ll show you how to wash wool without felting your precious hand knits.
What You’ll Need:
Your Garment
Blocking Mats
Blocking Pins
Water
A Basin or Sink
A Towel
Hand Washing Delicates
My pile of unwashed knitwear and delicates sometimes grows and gets neglected because of the perceived extra care,
But after I’m done, I often realize, wow, I could’ve done that way sooner, it was easier than expected!
Eucalan is a rinse free liquid wool & delicate washing detergent that re-lanolizes your hand knit garments and makes them feel good as new.
Step 1: Add Eucalan to a basin or sink filled with lukewarm water
Use one Teaspoon of Eucalan for each Gallon of Water.
Step 2: Soak your garment in the water for 15- 20 minutes
I like to swish mine around gently, and if my garment is soiled in places, I will rub that area with the soap directly, like the underarms on my sweaters.
Step 3: squeeze excess water from your garment
With eucalan you don’t need to rinse it out, so this saves a step.
I suggest rolling your garment in a towel, especially if it’s big and might risk stretching out.
Blocking elongates and evens out your stitches, which, will make your garment larger, especially if you have knit lace.
Before Blocking
Step 4 : block your knitting & lay flat to dry
After Blocking
Why block your knitting?
If the before and After photos are not evidence enough…
Blocking evens out any irregularity in stitches,
blocking aligns and fixes rolled up edges,
blocking opens up stitches, allowing lace patterns to bloom,
and if there was excess dye in the yarn washing & blocking can help to remove that.
Each time you wash your wool garment, whatever way it dries is the way that it will stay. wool remembers the form it was put in when drying, so if you don’t want misshapen and wrinkly garments. block it!
caution: blocking your garments will make them grow, so if it’s a large and heavy garment you want to take extra care to roll in a towel and avoid unnecessary stretching.
To Block:
Lay your garment flat.
With your hands, gently arrange the garment, flatten out your edges, and pin it to the correct measurements and shape.
Step 5: let it dry! Maybe run a fan on it if you are excited to wear your garment.
That’s really it, Eucalan makes it so simple, and you don’t even have to rinse this laundry detergent out.
You can also use Eucalan for the Machine as a Delicate Wool wash.
I have a top loading Washing Machine.
When it’s Laundry Day,
and I’m doing a full load of laundry of my delicates, wool sweaters and socks I put my laundry into the machine on soak with Eucalan. I let my laundry soak for 20 minutes. I do not let the machine agitate the clothes, I swish them around with my hands gently. I set the machine to spin and hang my clothes up, or lay them flat to dry.
Things I love about eucalan:
Eucalan Delicate Wash is non-toxic, biodegradable, free of optical brighteners, phosphates, synthetic fragrance and dye.
The Laundry Detergent contains lanolin which gives my hand knits new life, and improves their elasticity every time I wash them.
Eucalan is Rinse-Free, (we love an easy wash day).
It’s a Concentrated Laundry soap, a little goes a long way and one bottle lasts a while.
I usually go for the unscented, but there are 4 other scents that are lovely and they use essential oils which repels pests like moths!
Ranking the Eucalan Scents from Favorite to Least Favorite.
Ranking from Left to right:
All of the scents are pleasant, and these are my personal opinions.
My favorite is the unscented, it really doesn’t smell like anything, and I know that, if I use this one, I won’t have any conflicting smells if I decide to style my hair with a scented conditioner, or wear a scented lotion.
Coming in as a close second is Lavender. Eucalan uses essential oils as their scents, so it’s not the fake lavender smell that some products use. Lavender is also effective in repelling moths and other wool eating pests. (See my Fleece washing tip at the end)
Third we have Grapefruit. This is a pleasant un-obtrusive scent. it’s fruity and fun.
Eucalyptus comes in fourth. I like this scent. Sometimes, I accidentally leave my laundry in the machine and it gets musty. my trick for removing that smell is washing it again with a little bit of eucalyptus oil, so this scent would be perfect for that!
Finally we have Jasmine. This is the strongest scent, it’s not unpleasant, because it does smell like jasmine flowers. I don’t think it would pair well with other scents that I commonly wear (like my conditioner and lotions).
You know what I also use euclan for?
Finishing Washing Sheep’s fleece!
After the first rinses, and a scour with some dish detergent to remove the lanolin and dirt,
I will sometimes use Lavender scented eucalan as my final clean to restore lanolin because I like that natural bounce, and to add in the scent of the essential oils. Which gives added protection from moths, especially if I am storing the fleece for a long period of time.