Most items woven with cotton and linen are easy to care for.
These instructions apply to my towels, table linens, baby blankets and any item not marked “delicate” or “shrinkable wool”.
Don’t be afraid to use it!
My handwoven towels are fully functional.
You wouldn’t believe how many people think that my towels are “too beautiful to use” and it makes me sad.
My towels might be lovely, but you are missing out if you don’t wipe a few clean dishes at least once.
At a glance
Machine washable
Line dry or tumble dry
Hot iron if needed
No bleach, no fabric softener, no dry cleaning
Absorbency
My handwoven tea towels are designed to be very absorbent, with thick yarn and thirsty weave structures. They will hold a lot more water than a typical commercial tea towel.
If your towel gets super-dry or has a build-up of laundry detergent it may lose absorbency and start pushing water around instead of soaking it up.
To fix this, soak your towel for a few minutes, then wash in low temperature water with very little laundry detergent.
Try to avoid overdrying to maintain best absorbency.
Washing
Wash in the machine at a temperature of 40 ℃ or lower to reduce shrinkage.
You can wash in hot water up to 90 ℃, if you need to.
Items containing linen fibre will crease if you use a fast spin cycle. I stick to a slower spin for these.
I avoid getting lint on my napkins, tea towels, dish cloths and placemats by washingfluffy towels in a separate wash.
Drying and Pressing
Cottons can be tumble dried (especially baby blankets for a soft and fluffy effect), but I recommend line drying to avoid shrinkage and general wear-and-tear.
You can minimise wrinkling if you pull the cloth straight on the line when you hang it out. Once dry you can fold it up flat and any wrinkles will squash themselves out.
You can press cotton, linen and cottolin on a hot iron setting, if needed.
Avoid
Don’t bleach or dry clean.
Don’t use fabric softeners because they reduce the absorbency of the cloth.