Washing your handwoven scarf or wrap

Handwoven scarves tend to be quite easy to pull out of shape or snag threads, so you’ll need to be a bit more careful when washing them.

Remove rings and jewellery, so you won’t catch the on the scarf while you’re working.

You will need the following: lukewarm water, a sink, bowl or bucket, some liquid soap, optional fabric conditioner, a bath towel (or two smaller hand towels laid end-to-end), somewhere to dry your scarf.

Fill a bowl, sink or bucket with lukewarm (hand hot) water and put in a little squirt of liquid soap.

Now put the scarf into the water and agitate it gently for a few seconds to make sure the whole garment is wet through.

Leave it to soak for about five minutes

Take the scarf out of the soapy water and tip it out. Refill the bowl with clean lukewarm water and immerse the scarf to wash out the soap suds.

You may need to do this a couple of times to get all the soap out.

You may wish to put a small amount of fabric conditioner in the final rinse.

Place a bath towel on a flat surface (kitchen worktop shown here) ready for when you have finished the rinsing.

Take the scarf out of the final rinse water and very gently give it a squeeze, so it’s not dripping with water.

Place it nice and flat on the towel.

Now begin to roll the wrap the scarf up inside the towel like a Swiss roll. This will soak up most of the water left in the scarf.

Now your scarf is ready to dry naturally, indoors or outdoors, either flat on a rack or hanging up (shown here on a radiator airer).