I managed to thrift an honest to goodness made in Ireland aran sweater in my actual Irish clan’s aran pattern for only $1!
Unfortunately it had been shrunk just enough to make it uncomfortably short in the length and sleeves. Fortunately it gave me the chance to try out the de-shrinking method I’d seen floating about the interwebs.
Let’s see if this how to stretch a shrunken sweater trick really works:
Snag that shrunken sweater and some cheap hair conditioner
(yet another DIY use for those free samples!)
Fill the bathtub (or sink) with enough warm water to cover the sweater, mix in the hair conditioner, completely submerge the sweater and soak for an hour or so. Apparently the chemicals in the cheap hair conditioner loosen the shrunken knit fibers.
Drain the water (do not rinse out the conditioner), ring out the sweater and lay flat to dry. Give the sweater a few healthy stretches during the drip dry and damp dry stages.
Hey, hey! It actually worked! The sleeves and body of the sweater are now the perfect length!
+ the hair conditioner has made that itchy wool super soft and extra cozy!
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Hey, thanks for sharing! I had read that you needn’t buy expensive wool detergents to wash the wooly sweaters but that you could use your usual shampoo. Makes perfect sense if you consider that it’s the sheep’s hair…
hahaha!:D Absolutely Claudia, I am seriously impressed at how soft the hair conditioner made that formerly itchy wool but as you said, it makes perfect sense that the stuff we clean our hair with would also work for lovely sheep locks too!
I use the cheapest baby shampoo I can find to wash my sweaters.
Brilliant idea 😀 (& oh-so-gentle for the wool!)
how to stretch a shrunken sweater…That’s AMAZING!..Thanks SO much for trying this. I would not have believed it would work and would not have tried it. Ciao, JH. Auburn WA, USA
I’ve been wanting to try it out for awhile but didn’t have a suitable shrunken victim, luckily I was able to thrift a fabulous one during my trip 😀
I am impressed. What a clever trick. 🙂
Yup, there’s no need to refashion a shrunken sweater anymore – unless you really want to 😉
Well, well well who would have thought it. Can’t believe this works, thanks for sharing. The amount of jumpers (as we say in the UK) that I’ve turned into a cushion cover or put in the charity shop is unbelievable. This tip is a definite keeper!
I was pretty shocked that it worked so well too 😉 I’m not sure how successful it would be on knits that have been shrunk more than a size but it definitely works to make those too small sweaters fit more comfortably.