How to Care for Your Handmade Items: A Practical Guide for Makers
You've spent hours, sometimes weeks or months (perhaps even years... don't worry; we're guilty too!), making something by hand. A jumper, a shawl, a baby blanket, a pair of socks. The making is the joyful part but a little care afterwards is what keeps that finished piece looking good and lasting for decades rather than seasons.
Handmade items aren't difficult to look after, but they do have different needs from shop-bought clothing, and a few of the habits we apply to mass-produced garments can actually shorten the life of a handmade one. Here's a practical guide to washing, drying, storing and mending your finished makes, so all that effort stays looking its best.
Start with the Label You Kept (or Wish You Had)
The single most useful thing you can do for a finished item happens before you even make it: keep the yarn label, or note down the fibre and its care instructions.
The right way to care for a handmade piece depends almost entirely on what it's made from. A superwash wool jumper, a cotton market bag and a delicate silk-blend shawl all want different treatment, and the yarn band tells you what each one needs, including water temperature, whether it can be machine washed and whether it can be tumble dried.
If you're making something as a gift, this matters even more. The person receiving it won't know what the yarn was unless you tell them, so a small handwritten care tag tucked in with the gift is a thoughtful touch that saves them from guessing and saves your hard work from an accidental hot wash.
If you've already lost track of what a piece is made from, don't worry. When you're unsure, always treat the item as though it's the most delicate fibre it might contain: cool water, gentle handling and lay flat to dry. That cautious approach is very rarely the wrong one.
Luckily, if you can remember the yarn name, websites like Ravelry often keep a catalogue of yarns, sometimes including washing instructions, even if the yarn has been discontinued.
Washing Handmade Knits, Crochet and Woven Projects
Washing is where handmade items are most often accidentally damaged, usually by heat and agitation. Here's how to do it well.
Hand Washing (the Safest Option for Most Makes)
For anything made from wool, alpaca, silk or a blend containing them, hand washing is the gentlest and safest choice.
Fill a clean basin with cool water. Aim for water that feels cool to the touch. Heat is what causes wool to felt and shrink, so this step matters more than any other.
Add a small amount of gentle wash. A wool wash or a pH-neutral, dye-free detergent is ideal. Unscented formulas, or those containing lanolin for wool, work beautifully. Avoid regular laundry detergent, which is often too harsh for natural fibres.
Let the item soak. Place it in the water and let it sink naturally rather than pushing it under. Leave it to soak for 10 to 15 minutes. Resist the urge to swish, rub or agitate it, as that combination of movement and water is exactly what causes felting.
Rinse gently in more cool water. Keep the water temperature consistent. A sudden change from warm to cold (or the reverse) can shock the fibres.
We've covered the finer points of washing hand-dyed pieces in our guide to caring for hand-dyed yarn, which is well worth a read if your make used indie-dyed or richly coloured yarn.
Machine Washing (Only When the Fibre Allows)
Some fibres genuinely handle a machine wash. Superwash wool, most cottons and acrylic or acrylic blends are usually machine washable but always check the yarn band first.
If you do machine wash, use a gentle or wool cycle, cool water and a mild detergent. Placing the item inside a mesh laundry bag adds a layer of protection and reduces the friction that can cause pilling. When in any doubt, hand washing is always the safer path.
Drying Without Losing Shape
How you dry a handmade item is just as important as how you wash it because a wet knit is heavy and easily stretched out of shape.
Never wring or hang a wet handmade piece. The weight of the water will pull it long and misshapen, and that stretch can be permanent.
Instead, lay the item flat on a clean, dry towel, then roll the towel up with the item inside and gently press to squeeze out excess water. Unroll, then reshape the piece on a fresh dry towel or a flat drying rack, easing it back to its correct measurements while it's damp.
Dry it flat, away from direct sunlight and any direct heat source like a heater or radiator. Sunlight can fade colours over time, and heat can damage fibres and affect softness. A well-ventilated spot indoors is perfect. Avoid drying on a surface that holds moisture, like a thick terry towel left flat, as air needs to circulate underneath for the piece to dry evenly.
This flat-drying process is also your chance to block the item, gently shaping it to open up stitch patterns and settle everything into its final form. You will need to occasionally re-block an item after your initial blocking. This isn't an indication that anything is wrong. For fibres with a natural elasticity, such as wool, it means the fibre is doing exactly what it was meant to be doing: being springy and bouncing back to its original shape. Gentle re-blocking each time trains the yarn to relax in the shape you want your garment to hold.
Storing Your Handmade Items
Good storage keeps finished pieces safe between wears and seasons, and protects them from the three main threats: stretching, moths and moisture.
Fold, don't hang. Hanging knitted and crocheted garments lets gravity stretch them out over time, particularly at the shoulders. Fold them instead and store them flat on a shelf or in a drawer. If you don't have enough room to fold them, we recommend a next-best option to hang them over the bottom bar of a coat hanger, folded at the centre, instead of hanging them by the shoulders.
Keep them clean before storing. Always store items clean, especially over the warmer months. Moths and other pests are drawn to the traces of skin, food and perspiration left on worn garments, so a piece put away clean is far less appealing to them.
Protect natural fibres from moths. Wool and other animal fibres are the most vulnerable. Store them in breathable containers or garment bags rather than sealed plastic, and consider natural deterrents like cedar or lavender. Airtight plastic can trap moisture and encourage mildew, so breathability matters.
Choose a cool, dry, dark spot. Damp encourages mildew and mould, while direct light fades colour over time. A cool, dry, dark cupboard is the ideal home for your handmade wardrobe.
Give heavy items a rest. For heavily worn garments, letting a piece rest for a day between wears allows the fibres to recover their shape, particularly with less elastic fibres like cotton and plant-based yarns.
Mending: Keeping Your Makes in Service
One of the joys of handmade items is that they can be repaired rather than discarded. A small hole or a worn patch is not the end of a garment's life. It's simply the next chapter.
Save your leftover yarn. Always keep a little of the yarn you used for each project, ideally with a note of what it was. Even a few metres tucked away makes future mending far easier, as you'll have a perfect colour and fibre match ready to go.
Catch dropped stitches and small holes early. A tiny hole is quick to fix, while a neglected one grows. Dealing with it promptly keeps the repair small and almost invisible.
Learn a few simple repair techniques. Darning is the classic method for mending holes in knitted fabric, working a woven patch across the gap. Duplicate stitch (also called Swiss darning) lets you reinforce a thin area by tracing over the existing stitches, strengthening the fabric before a hole even forms. Neither is difficult, and both extend the life of a well-loved piece considerably.
Reinforce high-wear areas. Elbows, heels and cuffs take the most punishment. If you notice one wearing thin, a little reinforcement with duplicate stitch can add months or years of wear.
Embrace visible mending if it suits you. Some makers turn repairs into a feature, using a contrasting colour to make a mend part of the design rather than hiding it. It's a creative and practical way to give a garment character while extending its life.
A Few Fibre-Specific Notes
While the principles above apply broadly, a few fibres have particular quirks worth knowing:
Wool and animal fibres felt with heat and agitation, so cool water and gentle handling are essential. They also benefit from resting between wears and don't need washing as often as you might think, as airing them out is often enough.
Cotton and plant-based fibres are more robust in the wash but have less elasticity, so they're prone to stretching. Store them folded and reshape carefully after washing.
Silk and silk blends are strong but delicate to heat and harsh detergents. Cool water, a gentle wash and flat drying away from light will keep them lustrous.
Acrylic and synthetic blends are generally the easiest to care for and often machine washable, though they can pill with friction and don't love high heat in the dryer.
When a piece combines fibres, always follow the care needs of the most delicate one in the blend.
Care Is Part of the Craft: How to Care for Handmade Items
We often hear that caring for handmade items feels like a chore to people. We encourage you to think about looking after your handmade items as an ongoing part of the making. A jumper washed gently and stored well, a blanket mended rather than replaced, a shawl dried flat and kept out of harsh light: these small habits are what turn a finished project into something that lasts and often into something that gets passed down through generations, like some of the handmade pieces in my family from my grandmother and my mother.
The care you put in afterwards honours the hours you put in during the making. And once these habits become second nature, they take almost no effort at all.
If you have questions about caring for a piece made from one of our yarns or you're not sure how to treat a particular fibre, we're always happy to help, whether online or in person at one of our markets. And if you're a PlyPerks member, don't forget to earn points on every purchase, including the tools and accessories that make caring for your makes that little bit easier. Not yet a member? Joining is free.
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