Defuzzing a Cashmere Sweater: The Step-by-Step Guide

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Discover how to wash your cashmere knitwear so that you can avoid trying to defuzz it next time! Our guide should help you avoid that.

You are surely looking for methods to defuzz a cashmere sweater. Indeed, being fragile, this goat wool requires special care. Thus, it felts during improper handling. Here’s how to rescue your wool and cashmere sweaters and cardigans.

Inappropriate washing and drying can distort a knitwear and cause pilling. Improper machine washing of wool and inadequate drying can cause pilling, shrinkage, or stretching of a knitted garment. To fix these mistakes, you can proceed with defelting.

Rescuing your cashmere sweater through defelting

A sweater that has been washed in a poorly adjusted washing machine can lose its softness, stretch or shrink. This is due to the water absorption by the wool. During high-temperature washing, the knitting weave absorbs it and its scales spread out and interlock.

The textile fibers in contact with heat tighten. Therefore, knitted sweaters tend to shrink and take on a cardboard-like, stiff appearance.

This is called felting. However, it is possible to rescue a felted sweater. And this defelting process is accessible to everyone.

Defelting wool consists of straightening the natural fibers of the fabric, restoring its softness and original size. Conditioner, white vinegar, glycerin, and even the cooking water of white beans are products to use for defelting.

However, they must be mixed with cold or lukewarm water. You can also enlarge the fabric using an iron. Defelting is therefore a thermal treatment of wool knitwear that restores the original appearance of the fabric.

How to defuzz a cashmere sweater: a precise process

We therefore offer you five methods to defuzz your cashmere cardigan or sweater and make it comfortable again:

1. Defuzz your sweater with white vinegar

Here’s how to proceed with this first defelting technique:

Fill your basin with cold or lukewarm water. Then, add a glass of white vinegar for each liter. Mix the solution well and fully soak the sweater to be defelted until it becomes dark in color. Then, saturate the sweater well with the vinegar solution.

Stretch it every hour so that it easily regains its original size. Repeat the operation for about ten hours and wring the pullover well with a cotton towel. Finally, dry it on a dry towel flat in the open air.

White vinegar is a powerful softener that is very effective for your woolen garments.

2. Defelting with glycerin

You can easily defuzz your sweater with glycerin, which you can find at the pharmacy:

Start by filling a basin with cold or lukewarm water. Add one tablespoon of glycerin for each liter of water and mix the solution well. Then, immerse your knit sweater in the glycerin solution and soak it well until it becomes dark.

As with the first method, gently stretch your laundry, but this time do it every 15 minutes. Then rinse your sweater with cold clear water. Wring out the sweater with a terry towel. Pour a glass of white vinegar on your knitted sweater and squeeze it again.

Finally, dry the cashmere sweater on a flat towel away from sunlight and heat. Glycerin is a humectant that relaxes the fiber of a goat wool fabric and makes it more supple.

3. Hair conditioner

This product is also a good one for defelting your stretched sweater:

Follow the first steps of filling the basin. Then take one tablespoon of hair conditioner per liter of cold or lukewarm solvent. Soak your knit sweater in the mixed solution for four hours.

Stretch it frequently, then rinse, wring out, and dry with cotton towels. Being a very gentle product, hair conditioner plays a softening role on your cashmere garments here.

4. Unusual tip: cooking water from white beans

Start by cooking a large quantity of white beans and let it cool. Soak your goat wool sweater in it. Stretch it every fifteen minutes until it becomes wider.

Rinse and wring out your cashmere garment and then dry it flat with terry towels without twisting it.

The white bean solution is a good stain remover and gives volume to delicate fabrics.

5. Last tip: ironing

Set the iron to the wool/silk program and gently iron your knit sweater while stretching it. Continue until it regains its original size. Although heat tends to shrink wool fabrics, gentle heat does not cause as much damage to delicate fabrics.

That’s why you need to set your iron to the gentle program suitable for wool.

To go further, discover the steps to dry your cashmere sweater without any problems!