How to wash embroidered caps and knitwear

Embroidery is hard-wearing, but the fabric around it is not always. Most damage we see is heat.

Washing

Cold water, a mild detergent, and turn the item inside out so the stitching faces away from whatever it is rubbing against. No bleach — it attacks thread colour faster than it attacks cotton. For a structured cap, hand-washing in a basin keeps the peak's shape far better than a drum does; if you must machine-wash one, put it in a laundry bag on the gentlest cycle.

Drying

Never a tumble dryer. Heat shrinks the fabric around the stitching, and because the thread does not shrink with it, the panel puckers around the design permanently. Air-dry a cap on something that holds its crown — a jar, a folded towel, a ball. Dry knitwear flat, never on a hanger, or the weight of the water will stretch it out of shape.

Ironing

Iron on the reverse, on a low setting, with a cloth between the iron and the work. Pressing directly onto satin stitching flattens the sheen that makes it look like embroidery, and it cannot be brought back.

If a thread pulls

Do not pull it further, and do not cut it flush with the fabric. Ease it back through to the reverse with a blunt needle if you can, and trim it there, leaving a few millimetres. Embroidery is locked stitch by stitch, so one loose loop is not the beginning of the whole thing unravelling — it just looks alarming.

Storage

Caps keep their shape stacked crown-inside-crown, not squashed flat. Knitwear folded, not hung.