Cashmere Clothing needs careful hand washing to keep it at its best. This applies to cashmere, jumpers, sweaters and any other knitted cashmere items.
Dry-cleaning cashmere clothing is responsible for more holes than clothes moths these days.Repeated, poor-quality dry cleaning breaks the fibres and causes holes. Hand washing is the best care you can give your cashmere. Old-fashioned hand washing is almost a dying art but it leaves the cashmere considerably softer.
Washing Cashmere Clothing – Instructions
You will need:
- A bowl
- A supply of lukewarm water
- Specialist cashmere shampoo or soap flakes
- 2 or 3 large old, thick towels
- A flat surface where you can leave it undisturbed for several days.
- Fill a bowl with lukewarm water. It should be just warm to your touch not hot at all.
- Add a small amount of a mild specialist soap.(Denner’s Cashmere Shampoo is ideal and NO Need to Rinse!)
- Swill the jumper or shawl around very gently. NO scrubbing!
- Squeeze very carefully to remove excess water and put on the drainer.
- Fill the bowl with clear tepid water and rinse the garment. Do this repeatedly till the water runs clear. You’ve heard the phrase ‘rinse and repeat’ right ? This can takes several bowls of water – 5 or 6 even!
- When the water is clear, gently remove your precious, squeeze again.
- Have ready a big, old thick towel. Lay your garment flat on top of it.
- Gently pull it to the shape it should be. Pay special attention to ends of sleeves, necklines and hems.
- Slightly scary this bit. You can remove more excess water by rolling up the towel. and again gently squeezing it. NEVER WRING IT OUT!!!
- Unroll the towel.
- Remove garment and lay flat on another towel. If it’s big enough fold it in half over the garment otherwise place yet another towel on top.
- Leave it laying flat somewhere safe until totally dry. May take several days, depends on weather, heat in your house etc.
Note - watch out for cats sitting on your drying garment. Claws and cashmere are not a good mix!
Remember if you use a cashmere shampoo you can avoid all that rinsing.So there you are, that’s how you can safely hand wash your cashmere clothing.
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