Before You Cut: Sewing With Vintage Wool

Imperfections: what to do about them

With vintage, deadstock and secondhand wool, an imperfection is often something you can work around rather than something you need to repair.

After all, you haven't cut your garment yet.

A small hole near the edge of a two-metre bundle might make absolutely no difference to your project. The same hole in the middle of the only section wide enough for your coat front is a different story.

The useful question is: Where is the problem, how much good fabric do you have around it, and does it affect your plans?

A quick guide to common imperfections

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For insect damage, one distinction matters: old holes and an active infestation aren't the same thing.

Clothes moth and carpet beetle larvae can leave holes, missing surface fibres, webbing and casings. If you find evidence of active pests, isolate the textile and address the infestation before putting it with your other fabrics.

The Canadian Conservation Institute's guide to textile care is a good reference for identifying insect activity and protecting stored textiles.

Otherwise, the practical approach is often quite straightforward.

Mark the flaws with removable thread markers or another fabric-safe method, work out where your usable sections are, and adjust your cutting layout.

You might lose a few centimetres. You might need to change a pattern piece or combine your wool with another fabric.

And sometimes an interesting colour variation or irregular shape leads to a better project than the one you originally planned.

Okay, so what should you make?

This is where the fabric gets a vote.

You might have bought it imagining a coat, but after unfolding it, you realize it has the perfect drape for trousers. Or maybe the floral wool is so beautifully patterned that you'd rather use it in a simple silhouette where the material does most of the work.

And sometimes the size or shape of a recovered piece makes the decision for you.

Let the wool's behaviour guide you

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Our grey boiled wool bundle, for example, is only approximately 0.6 m long and has an irregular cut. That might be limiting if you're thinking about a full jacket, but rather interesting if you're considering a collar, hat, bag or a combination with another material.

And our floral wool twill has a pattern worth showing off. With a material like that, a simpler pattern may be more effective than one filled with complicated seams.

A small tip for future-you

If you're not ready to sew yet, save the information you have about the fabric.

In Sewjo, our free stash-organizing app, you can keep photos, dimensions and notes together. If you purchased your wool from FABCYCLE, look for the Add to stash button in your order-confirmation email to import the available product information.

You can learn more about it on our Sewjo and FABCYCLE page.

We still recommend checking your measurements once you've unfolded the piece, particularly if it has irregular cuts or sections you want to avoid.

A photograph of a mill stamp, a note about a small hole or a reminder that the fabric has directional nap might be very helpful six months from now.

Should you wash vintage or deadstock wool before sewing?

Here's a question we get with recovered fabrics: you have this beautiful piece of wool, but there's no care label and no information about how it was previously treated. So what do you actually do with it?

The first thing to know is that you don't necessarily need to wash wool before sewing it.

Wool is naturally resistant to many odours and stains, and cleaning or wetting a fabric can sometimes change the very finish that made you fall in love with it.

But if you want to remove a storage smell, deal with a mark or make sure your finished garment won't shrink, there are a few practical ways to approach it.

First, does it actually need washing?

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How to test unknown wool for shrinkage

This is especially useful when you have no care instructions.

Rather than putting the entire bundle in the washing machine and hoping for the best, find a small offcut or a corner that won't be needed for your project.

Here's a practical way to test it.

1. Cut a sample approximately 20 × 20 cm, if you have sufficient spare material. Keep its original lengthwise and crosswise directions identifiable.
2. Mark a 15 × 15 cm square inside the sample using loose contrasting basting stitches, well away from the edges. These marks give you consistent reference points even if the cut edges fray.
3. Record the measurements between your marks in both directions, along with how the fabric feels and looks.
4. Treat the sample using the method you're considering for the finished garment. That might be steam, hand washing or a machine wool cycle.
5. Let it dry completely and relax naturally, without pulling or stretching it back into shape.
6. Measure again, using the same marks, and compare the texture, colour, drape and surface.

Suppose your 15 cm measurement becomes 14.4 cm after washing.

That's 4% shrinkage in that direction.

It might not sound dramatic, but it matters if you've already cut a fitted garment.

Also pay attention to whether the sample has become denser, stiffer, fuzzier or less fluid. A fabric can change substantially without showing dramatic shrinkage.

Don't judge shrinkage while the wool is still wet. Wet fabric can stretch under its own weight, particularly if you've lifted or hung it while saturated.

This small test won't guarantee how an entire length will behave, but it's a much better starting point than guessing.

If you want to hand-wash the wool

For a sound, unstructured wool fabric that tolerates a wet test, hand washing gives you more control over agitation than an ordinary machine cycle.

Try this approach:

1. Fill a clean basin or bathtub with cool water, no warmer than approximately 30°C.
2. Add a small amount of mild, pH-neutral wool detergent. Avoid bleach, heavy-duty detergents and biological detergents containing enzymes.
3. Immerse the material gently. Let it soak briefly, around 5–10 minutes, if the sample tolerated that treatment.
4. Gently press water through the fabric. Avoid rubbing, scrubbing, twisting or wringing.
5. Drain and rinse using water at a similar cool temperature, handling the fabric as little as possible.
6. Press out excess water gently. For smaller pieces, roll the fabric in clean towels and press the roll to absorb moisture.
7. Dry flat where practical, supporting the fabric's weight and keeping it out of direct heat and prolonged sunlight.

For larger lengths, the most awkward part may be handling the wet fabric.

A few metres of wool can become surprisingly heavy when saturated. If it can't be properly supported while drying, hand washing the whole length may not be a sensible option.

And if the sample became noticeably denser, felted, distorted or changed texture, don't repeat that treatment on the full piece unless those changes are intentional.

Can you put unknown wool in a washing machine?

Possibly, but don't make that decision based on the fibre name alone.

A fine Merino fabric isn't automatically machine washable. Neither is a wool-polyester blend.

Machine-washable wool often has particular finishes or constructions that help it withstand agitation. With recovered textiles, we usually don't know whether those treatments are present.

If machine washing is how you intend to care for the finished garment, test a sample on the exact cycle you plan to use.

A sensible test setup is:

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If you're hoping to machine wash the finished garment repeatedly, consider repeating the test once more. A sample that survives one wash may still change with subsequent washing.

If the swatch shrinks, felts or loses the finish you like, that's your answer: don't use that machine cycle on the full length.

A successful test is useful evidence, not a guarantee. The full fabric may contain differences in construction, finishing or condition that aren't present in your sample.

What about steaming the fabric instead?

This is often an option worth considering for wool suiting and coating when you don't intend to wet-wash the finished garment.

Steam can help relax creases and some tension left in the cloth during manufacturing.

It may also cause dimensional change, so test a small section before treating the entire piece.

For a simple steam test:

1. Place the sample flat on a padded pressing surface.
2. Use a suitable wool setting and a pressing cloth where needed.
3. Hold the iron just above the fabric and apply steam without dragging the iron across the surface.
4. Allow the wool to cool and dry completely without moving or stretching it.
5. Check the original reference measurements and examine the surface.

If the fabric responds well, you can use the same method section by section across the full length, allowing each area to cool and dry.

But remember: steam preparation doesn't mean the fabric is now machine washable.

Steam treatment and a full wet wash involve different amounts of moisture and mechanical action.

Does the type of wool change how you should prepare it?

Yes, although the name is only a starting point.

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There's a good example in Threads magazine's guide to wool gabardine: its author describes preshrinking and hand-washing suitable unlined gabardine garments, while noting that interfacing and garment construction can change the appropriate care method.

That distinction is important. How you care for the finished garment depends on more than the outer fabric. Linings, interfacing, shoulder pads and other components may not tolerate the same treatment.

And if your wool simply needs airing before you get started, there's nothing wrong with keeping things that straightforward.

You don't need to wash a beautiful piece of wool just because it's been sitting in someone's stash for a few years.

For more wool-care information, Woolmark has guides to washing wool and choosing suitable detergents.

A few more wool questions worth knowing