According to Shrinkage, “Shrinkage is defined as a change in the dimensions of a fabric or garment.” And it can become either bigger or smaller. Most clothes are made of cotton, which made up of fibers. When you are washing clothes, the fibers that make up clothes are been pulled, stretched and twisted. The connection between two fibers can’t hold the force, so they either get closer or further. Most of the time, the connection between fibers get stressed, and they just get closer, then the clothes shrink. mental_floss
There are three kinds of shrinkage, felting, relaxation and consolidation. They are caused by different situations and fibers types. Felting happens when the clothes are made of animals fibers. There are scales along the surface of the animal fibers. When water and heat meet with the animals fibers, those scales will will compress together, cause the shrink. Relaxation is happen when fibers are placed in water or liquid. When fibers meet warm water, it will relax and absorb water. The change cause by relaxation is very small, less than 1%, so this is the best shrinkage you can get. Consolidation happen when water, heat and mechanical action meet together. The fibers had to release the stressed cause by those things, that force fibers to change form. This will change the size of the clothes the most. Shrinkage
Here are some ways that can prevent shrinkage. When you buy the clothes, choose the clothes that label “preshrunk”, this means the clothes are already shrink, and they won’t shrink again. Although using cold and warm water won’t prevent clothes from shrinking, it is still much better than using hot water. Read the labels on the clothes carefully, they will tell you how to take care the specific cloth. Air drying your clothes also prevent the shrinkage, when using dryer, select the lower heat that is more gentle to the clothes. Prevent shrinkage
Clothes are important to us, and we need to take care of them. some clothes are extremely expensive, we need to prevent them from shrinkage. There are many ways you can use to protect you clothes!
In your blog post you provide the reader with a very in-depth explanation of the different types of shrinkage clothing can experiences when put in the washer machine and dyer. This initial basis and core understanding of your topic is great, however, I find that there is no analysis of information or interpretation of data in your post. You may want to take it a step further and try to look at why certain fabrics shrink more than others, if certain laundry detergents affect or prevent shrinkage, or if it is possible to un-shrink clothes; and see if there are any studies related to those topics.
Reviwed.com posted an article in 2013, analyzing and commenting on their findings about how “dryers destroy clothes”. They found that “tumble-drying does irreparable damage to clothes” and in a further study, “researchers took square pieces of cotton and cotton/synthetic fiber blended fabrics and marked several areas, noting the distances and angles between each mark” (Senguen and Wolf-Mann). They found that “drying shrinks clothing twice as much as washing, and tumble-drying shrinks twice as much as air-drying” (Senguen and Wolf-Mann). Further more, they also deduced that temperature as you mentioned several times above is not actually directly “affect shrinkage” (Senguen and Wolf-Mann),it was however, “the mechanical agitation and forced air was the culprit for shrunken clothing” (Senguen and Wolf-Mann). This was clear to the scientists after realizing that when looking at the clothes tumble dried on high and low shrank the same amount as well as those in warm and cold water when washed (Senguen and Wolf-Mann).
Citation:
Senguen, Timur, and Ethan Wolff-Mann. “Science Blog.” How Dryers Destroy Clothes: We Delve Into the Research. 8 Aug. 2013. Web. 1 Dec. 2015. http://www.reviewed.com/science/how-dryers-destroy-your-clothes