Always prewash your Fabrics!

In fall 2020 I found this beautiful blue knitted fabric on one of my excursions into the Doha fabric market. I had not planned to buy any knitted fabric and did not expect to find any in Doha anyway. After all, there is no real winter in Doha and you do not need warm clothes a lot. But I remembered this one egg-shaped jacket that I had seen in one of my Burda magazines.

The shop assistant even told me that this is a fabric from Japan that they have already had for 4 winters. They always bring it out for a month or so when it slowly starts to get chilly, but they did not succeed to sell the whole bolt yet over the last years. So, I thought I could give it a go. Such a wide egg-shaped jacket would be a nice addition to my office wardrobe. I could even leave it in my office which is usually super cold. Thus it would be handy in summer and in winter. 🙂

Prewashing Knitted Fabrics?

On a general note, I usually wash all the fabrics that I buy from the Doha fabric market. One reason for this is that very often and especially if the fabric is cheap it is not color proven. The other reason is the smell. All the fabric bolts are not really stored in super-ventilated shops and usually, the smell is horrible. 

And don’t ask me why… but I did not wash this blue knit that came from a four-year-old bold!

I would regret this a few weeks later… 🙁 

Or wouldn’t I?

Making the Pattern

Instead of washing my fabric, I started right away by making my sewing pattern from paper. Yes, in this case, I could not use the option to print a PDF and just cut my pattern. I had to copy the pattern with tracing paper as this egg shape jacket was featured in one of my older magazines and was not from the Burda Style website. And other than my two shirts and dress that were all based on one pattern there was only one jacket option in this case.

The pattern itself is from a magazine that teaches sewing clothes step by step. With the help of this magazine, you can basically build your own capsule wardrobe. All pieces match with each other and you can combine them for various looks.

Sewing the Egg Shape Jacket

Sewing the fabric was a dream. I used my special needle from knitted fabric and it all worked very smoothly. Even finishing the seams with the overlock machine was amazingly easy. The finished seam looked super clean and the edges were cut off automatically. I was impressed by my overlock, to be honest, and decided it needed to be used more often. But I guess it was the weight of the fabric that made it work so smoothly and usually the fabrics I use are much lighter.

My egg shape jacket was finished in no time! It was a very easy project and besides the fact that it was really wide and big, I was totally convinced. I took it to the office the next day and wore it for about a month almost daily when I was cold. And I am always cold in the office! 🙂

Waking up from my Jacket Dream

It was last week when I decided that I really needed to take the jacket home to put it in the laundry. It didn’t feel fresh anymore and in preparation for the Christmas break, I thought it would be good to give it a little bit of a refresher. I put it in the machine on the wool program at 20 degrees Celsius which I thought would be appropriate for knitted fabric.

But It turned out to be a big mistake!

My knitted egg shape jacket shrunk to a third of its original size and can be merely described as a little sweater now!

The knitted fabric was basically felted in the machine. It completely changed its texture and this at 20 degrees Celsius only. I can still wear it as a shorter version of its former beauty, but of course, I was very disappointed.

I am not sure however what would have been the right way to handle the fabrics. Of course, I could have sent it to dry clean or washed it by hand. Had I washed it before sewing the jacket, I would have known. I could have bought more fabric to make a jacket in its actual size and saved me from my sorrow… 🙁

Did you have similar disappointments when washing clothes before? Do you wash your fabrics before engaging in sewing projects?