Session 3: Caring For Nylon

All right now let me look at all the different types of nylon fabric out there, at least that I could get my hands on, we're ready to start caring for your nylon. So if you're getting ready to work with nylon fabric, of course you're gonna want to consider what type it is. If you have a knit form of nylon, that's probably going to shrink when you wash it and dry it, so you might consider reserving it to be dry clean only, or you might wanna just do a quick wash test. A wash test is very simple, you're gonna take a swatch of the fabric, measure it beforehand and record those measurements, then run it through your washer in cool water and then low heat in the dryer, when it comes back out, measure it and see where it's at afterwards. If it's unframed to the point where it's a pile of threads, then clearly you should not wash it, in that manner again and plan on dry cleaning it. If however it weathers the storm fine and doesn't shrink, then go ahead and plan on washing it that way over the life of the project that you're working on. A wash test is always a great way to get started when working with any fabric, but especially with nylon. Now, once you've figured out which type you're working with, a woven versus a knit, or, you know, a ripstop or cordura along those lines, the thicker ones such as cordura unless you're planning on making something like a jacket or outerwear of that sort that you're gonna have, maybe you're going to wash it several times, you may not actually need to pre-treat it or care for it, but you might be wondering how to get out creases which we'll cover in just a moment. So always check out the manufacturer's instructions when you're purchasing the fabric. I personally like to just take a quick photo with my cell phone of the bolt end, that way I can see what fabric it is and I can see which instructions they've provided. I save all of those on my computer, in a folder that just says care instructions, and I can refer to it when I'm looking back later and prepared to work with the fabric. And that way I always know what the experts told me to do with that fabric. Now, before warned, some forms of nylon will melt when you put them in the dryer. If you have a very thin, thin form of nylon, it might melt, or you also need to take into consideration what coatings you have on your nylon. If it's a silicone or something along those lines, detergents can possibly harm it, there's all sorts of things that can go wrong. So just always do a wash test, and you can do the simplest of wash tests, which is instead of putting it through your washer and dryer, you just put it in a bowl of water with a little tiny bit of detergent take it out and let it air dry. Now what about pressing? Actually quickly let's talk about ripstop, because that's what we're gonna be working with primarily today. So how do I treat my ripstop? I wash it in cold water and a very light detergent and then I hang it to dry. I've sometimes done in the washer and I've sometimes just done it in my sink if I don't want to run down to the room. So that's my preferred way to work with it, you can work with it however you see fit but I recommend doing a wash test. All right, now let's talk about pressing and removing creases. So, you're gonna want to make sure that you're always using your iron on a setting that's designed for synthetics. Now my iron is actually very nice because it has a nylon setting. It says that specifically on the iron so that I know exactly where to put the dial when I'm ready to start pressing. If yours does not, it might say synthetics, it might say cool, it might just be towards the lower spectrum of the heat. So I'm gonna go ahead and dial mine to nylon, and then make sure it's still good and warm, yeah, it's set. And let's say you have some nylon here that has lots of creases in it, I made sure to crease this extra good just for you. So my first tip is, go ahead and make sure you have a press cloth. So you want to lay your press cloth over the nylon, and if you're very worried about it being fragile you're gonna push down and then lift up, and push down and lift up, though you can sometimes run with the fabric, I tend to find that it works best if you run the same direction each time. I'm not using a high steam setting just because this is my first go and I'm gonna make sure that it's gonna be safe to use it this way. I feel that whenever you're working with a synthetic fabric, you should always do a test like this where you have a press cloth over your ironing board. And if you want to protect your ironing board even further, you can put a press cloth underneath as well. Okay, so I've pressed that, let's see if it looks if it's finished being increased, it looks like I can still see a few creases. So in what that tells me is that I can actually increase the heat setting, and I may not actually need to use my press class. So I'm gonna give that a second to warm up, let it know that I want it to, and in fact I'm going to turn the steam up just a little bit. Now, this process that I'm going through to remove these creases, is one that I recommend for you as well, work your way up to a hotter temperature and work your way up to a higher steam setting. Many forms of nylon will not tolerate very much steam, others are fine, so it just depends on what you're working with. Okay, so it looks like it's ready to go. So I'm gonna take it, it's a little bit hotter. I'm gonna just turn it up a little more, and I'm gonna apply pressure as I moved my iron across the fabric. And again, you can always press and move if you're more comfortable doing that. Now let's see if it's removed it, it's removed almost all of them but you can see it starting to kind of pucker up here, if I actually touch it with the iron specifically, it might smooth out some, oh, it's very steamy, but it might start causing these kind of little ripples in it. That's a sign that my heat setting is getting a too high, so I wanna be careful about that. Now, if you're doing this and you're just not getting the results you want, there is another option. You can take your nylon fabric, and put it into some warm water and let it soak for a moment, and you can just ball it up in there, I know it's already creased, but you can just put it into the warm water, or if you're worried about balling it up, go ahead and lay it in your sink and put the warm water over it, let it soak for a minute or two so that it actually penetrates as much of the fabric as it is. It depends on, you know, what coating you have on it to make it waterproof versus water resistant. You just want to check that on the end of the bolt when you're purchasing your nylon so that you know exactly what you're getting. Because all the different types of coating on nylons, will give them different ratings in their water absorbency abilities or water deterrent abilities. So take your nylon wad it up or lay it gently in your sink, soak it for a minute or two, pull it out and you don't wanna wring it out actually, you want to place it on a towel then place another towel on top of it, and roll those up to get the excess water out. Nylon will actually dry pretty quickly, so you can instead of even rolling it out in your towels, you can go ahead and just lay it flat, smooth it out, make sure that all the places that had creases are nice and smooth, and let it air dry, that should remove all of the creases. If you still have one left in it, go ahead and increase the temperature of the water and let it soak a little bit longer. But you don't wanna use boiling water but hot water would be fine. So, those are my tips for how to care for nylon. In general, you wanna remember to use a lighter detergent, than other types, always check the coatings from the manufacturers to make sure it's safe to use detergent with it, and you don't just need to say, go ahead and make it dry clean only. And of course be careful when you're pressing so as not to melt it, I recommend a press cloth regularly when you're pressing, especially if you're new to working with nylon, cause you don't wanna melt it to your iron. You probably enjoy your irons ability to press things smoothly, and that might ruin it. So there you go, those are all the different care instructions for working with nylon. Now I'm gonna go ahead and get it set up to teach you how to start sewing with nylons. I'll give you all my best tips and I'll show you some tools that are perfect to use when you're working with it. Stay tuned.