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T-Shirts Unravelled

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131–140 of 163 posts

Re: T-Shirts Unravelled

#131
Good stuff. I'm interested to see data on other cotton garments, particularly buttondown shirts.

Cotton is just a lousy fiber. On the other hand, wool is a strong and resilient fiber. It also never needs to be washed provided it isn't stained.

My wife knit a wool sweater for a close friend of mine who spent 6 months as a bosun on the tallship the Lady Washington (the Interceptor in the Pirates of the Caribbean). Fresh water is scarce on a tallship so showers were infrequent. He came home during Christmas and I smelled the sweater which he claims he never washed and it smelled fresh. Surprisingly, it also kept him warm and dry on the open ocean. I later learned that Irish fishermen have been wearing wool sweaters at sea for generations.

Wool is the fiber of the past and future.

Re: T-Shirts Unravelled

#132
post #75

I feel obliged to share a lifehack my mother taught me regarding the laundry. After removing the laundry, take your t-shirts and stretch them yourself, one by one, when they're still slightly wet. Grab them with two hands symmetrically, stretch horizontally, moving your hands down along the shirt. Do the same vertically, and with the sleeves. Do not use a machine dryer, just a regular standing dryer like [1]. Put you…

> Do not use a machine dryer, just a regular standing dryer like. How does this contraption dry clothes? Looks like someone tried to take a clothesline indoors.

This is a common way to dry clothes in Korea. I've only ever seen 1 dryer in an apartment the whole time I've been here. A typical dryer rack looks like this: http://newimg.globalmarket.com/PicLib/441/35441/prod/4_13501...

Re: T-Shirts Unravelled

#133
post #75

I feel obliged to share a lifehack my mother taught me regarding the laundry. After removing the laundry, take your t-shirts and stretch them yourself, one by one, when they're still slightly wet. Grab them with two hands symmetrically, stretch horizontally, moving your hands down along the shirt. Do the same vertically, and with the sleeves. Do not use a machine dryer, just a regular standing dryer like [1]. Put you…

A similar hack I learned to avoid ironing: Just before hanging them, while they are still wet: Grab each t-shirt from the top with both hands, then do a couple of violent whip-like movements. This has the same effect of stretching the fabric so that no ironing is needed.

Do you want to sprinkle water everywhere? Because that's how you prinkle water everywhere.

Re: T-Shirts Unravelled

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it as important that kids clothing fits precisely though? I mean, evidently it is to you but I would I would have thought parents would be happy that the kids look decent enough. You even point out their rapid growth so it's not like they're going to be continuously wearing the perfect fit all the time. Buy slightly big and they grow in to it.

It's not so much "precisely" as "not ridiculously wrong". The difference between "slightly big" and "tent" isn't much, considering there is practically no objective basis to kids' sizings, which are basically the intended age with no consideration of variations in age & growth; the sizes do not reflect an actual size.

Yes, this! Just to get close to fitting, we have to get our son pants for a 6yo, shirts for a 4yo, and socks for a 3yo, and even then we end up rolling the sleeves on his shirts because he needs the length in the chest but not as much the arms. I can't tell you how many pants, shirts, socks, etc. we went through before figuring out this is the combination that works. Oh, yeah, and this is only with the specific combination of pant/shirt/sock brands that he's currently wearing. If we had to replace one part with a different brand (which we will, because he's growing and for some reason there's no brand that reliably stocks the full toddler-kid-youth size range), we'd be screwed.

Re: T-Shirts Unravelled

#135

I'm the founder of threadbase. Thanks everyone for your kind words. I'd love to hear any comments or suggestions for what you'd like to see next or how we can improve the user experience. We're also looking for front-end/design help, as well as help with computer vision tech. Feel free to email me chris@threadbase.com.

Excellent work and presentation! I'd love to see a similar treatment on jeans. For instance, I wear Levi's, and always default to 501 32/32, and the 5 pairs I have range from baggy to painted-on. I'd be interested to see the manufacturing variance within/between countries of origin–I have pairs from 3 different countries, and like I said, very different fits.

Re: T-Shirts Unravelled

#136

I'm the founder of threadbase. Thanks everyone for your kind words. I'd love to hear any comments or suggestions for what you'd like to see next or how we can improve the user experience. We're also looking for front-end/design help, as well as help with computer vision tech. Feel free to email me chris@threadbase.com.

This is fascinating because I'm interested in tracking the "Vanity Size" phenomenon.

Even though Obesity kills 300,000 Americans each year, and costs us Taxpayers billions of dollars, companies don't want to offend fat people and "vanity size". I'm a 5'10" 150# man and I have to wear "small" now in most brands!

By making fat people think they're not that fat, these companies are contributing to the obesity death rate.

Re: T-Shirts Unravelled

#138
> While hot water may cause shrinkage in wool garments, for cotton and polyester t-shirts, the washer settings don't make a big difference.

This is also more or less true of wool, in fact. It's not the hot water that shrinks a wool sweater, it's getting it damp and agitating it. The hotter it is while agitating, the faster it will shrink; being fully wet (as opposed to damp) mitigates the felting process somewhat. It appears that cotton is the same way (although its shrinkage is less extreme and less permanent than shrinking a wool sweater!). You can certainly get a wool sweater wet with hot water without shrinking it at all. If you're careful, you can wash it in hot water and agitate it to wash it properly, as long as you don't overdo it, without shrinking it. With some treated wools you can tumble dry on no heat, although I wouldn't recommend it; but under no circumstances should you wash a wool garment (in whatever heat of water) and then put it in a dryer with any heat at all. That will shrink it.

I knit, so I have extra awareness of how many people just don't know what to do with wool these days, and I have to educate them if I want to give them something I made. :)

Re: T-Shirts Unravelled

#139
post #75

I feel obliged to share a lifehack my mother taught me regarding the laundry. After removing the laundry, take your t-shirts and stretch them yourself, one by one, when they're still slightly wet. Grab them with two hands symmetrically, stretch horizontally, moving your hands down along the shirt. Do the same vertically, and with the sleeves. Do not use a machine dryer, just a regular standing dryer like [1]. Put you…

> Do not use a machine dryer, just a regular standing dryer like. How does this contraption dry clothes? Looks like someone tried to take a clothesline indoors.

No problem taking a clothesline indoors in case you can't or don't want to take the laundry outdoors: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clothes_horse
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