Washing, Blocking & Drying your Crochet Swatch – Why it’s Important

Why do you need to wash, block & and allow your crochet swatch to dry before you start making your sweater?

Swatching

Making a crochet swatch (at least 4 joined motifs) and then washing and blocking is a crucial step when making garments.

1. Checking gauge – everyone’s gauge is different. Each student in the class could make the same motif with the same hook size and yarn and you could end up with 5 different sized squares. Even a slight difference in size, such as a mere 5mm extra per motif, can end up making a big difference overall. Imagine your sweater is 6 motifs wide… that’s and extra 3cm front and 3cm back and your sweater is suddenly 6cm larger.
2. Making more than one motif is necessary because the size of the motif and how it behaves will change once it is joined to another motif.
3. Very often, a yarn will change size after washing. Especially natural yarns such as wool and silk. A yarn with a wool blend will grow after washing. Imagine you have made a sweater with the most perfect fit… after the first wash however, it grows all over by 10cm – it’s now too baggy with excessively long arms!
4. After your swatch has been washed, blocked & dried, you will probably find that your yarn has “bloomed” and even relaxed a little, into a drapier fabric. Again, this will give you a true idea of whether you will love the fabric that the combination of yarn, hook and motif create.

Blocking

There are many different ways to block your crochet swatch, such as spraying, steaming with an iron etc. For clothing, I prefer a full soak and wash in a mild detergent as this give the truest indication of what will happen to your sweater after its first wash.

Tip: Measure the crochet swatch and make a note of the size before washing & blocking. It’s good to know how much the size has changed. Knowing this will help during the making of your sweater, especially when you are checking sleeve lengths etc.

Method

What you will need:

• Clean towel*.
• Blocking mat or clean towel.
• Stainless steel dress-makers pins or blocking pins (they must be stainless steel or you will risk staining your swatch).
• Ruler or tape measure.
• A mild detergent or shampoo.
• A suitable space.

*some hand dyed yarns can “bleed” the first time you wash them… I avoid using my best towels, in case they accidentally get stains!

Setting up the Space

Let’s talk about the suitable space. Your piece will need to blocked somewhere where it can be left to dry. Depending on your yarn & the atmosphere of your house, this could take 12 hours (for cotton) to 3 hours (4ply wools). I often block on the carpet in a spare room, somewhere people aren’t going to be walking through and inadvertently stepping on your pins! If you have a blocking mat (these are sometimes foam or like mine, felt) you can do it on any clear surface that fits your mat. I have also blocked with just a towel on the mattress of the bed in the spare room.

Some ideas:

1. Custom blocking board – no towel needed.
2. Folded up towel on the carpet.
3. Folded up towel on a mattress.
4. Felt blocking board – I like to use a towel, or in this case a flannel as it’s only a small swatch.

Wash

Use a sink or bowl and fill with lukewarm water. Water that is too hot could shrink and even felt your yarn if it has a high wool content.
Use a small squirt of mild laundry detergent, a sprinkle of non-bio powder, soap flakes or shampoo. Mix in well.
Add your swatch and make sure all parts of the fibre are soaked through. Do not rub the fabric together. Just swish it around and gently squeeze for a minute or so.
Rinse in cold water.
Squeeze out excess water – DO NOT WRING.
Roll up the swatch in a clean towel to remove some more moisture. We want the swatch damp, not sopping wet.

Block

Straighten out your swatch as much as possible on your chosen surface, evenly distributing the motifs. This will give you a rough idea of the size of each motif. Expect a bit of trial and error. Use a ruler to block to uniform sizes.
I initially tried blocking to 10cm per motif (figs 1 & 2). As you can see, this was a bit severe. We want to pin out the motifs to their full size, without overstretching the yarn.
I eventually settled on 9.5cm per motif.
Starting with the corners, I carefully went around, pinning and measuring. Once I was happy they were as “square” as possible, I proceeded to pin the edges too, using the ruler as a guide.

Dry

Then I left it to dry. This will probably need to dry overnight as it’s cotton which takes a while to air dry.
You should generally allow at least 12 hours for your swatch to dry.

Relax

Once dried, unpin your swatch and give it a couple of hours to relax into its final shape and size.

Ready to Measure

Now your swatch is ready to measure!

Claremont Crochet Motif

The motif used in this tutorial is the Claremont Granny Square.

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