Washing, drying, stains and making clothes last.
109 guides in Lifestyle
Most washer dryers have no room for a proper condenser unit, so they use a film of cold mains water down the drum wall to condense the steam instead — which is why the tap has to be open.
Four different products get called fabric glue and they behave nothing alike — which survives washing, which stiffens the cloth, and where a stitch is still the only answer.
Pocket bags wear out at the bottom corners and along the seam. Three repairs in order of how worn the bag is — restitch, patch, or replace the bag entirely.
Peg dents and shoulder bumps come from hanging a garment by the wrong part while the weight of the water pulls it out of shape.
Choosing a size by measurement rather than dress size, the grain line, seam allowances, and making a toile before you cut the good fabric.
How the shoe is constructed decides whether it can be resoled at all, and the three checks that separate a shoe worth spending on from one that is finished.
Both are cellulose, but linen is a long bast fibre and cotton a short seed hair, and that one difference explains the coolness, the crumple, the price and the way each ages.
Static is dry synthetic fabric rubbing against itself in a dryer, so the fixes are moisture, separation and stopping short of bone dry.
Needle points, needle sizes and thread fibres matched to fabric, and why a ballpoint needle stops jersey skipping stitches.
Silk yellows from perspiration, from sunlight and from age, and it water-spots because the fibre swells locally. Each has a different cause and only some of them can be reversed.
A composition label that has washed away can be recovered from the fibre itself. Feel, water, wrinkle and a careful burn test on a single thread will place any fabric in its family, which is all you need to wash it.
Three small fastenings that all fail the same way — sewn on with too few stitches and in the wrong place. How to position each one so it takes the strain properly.
A belt loop tears off because it is sewn through only two layers of a waistband that takes the whole weight. How to reattach it so it holds, and what to do when the fabric has torn.