Sewing Tip -- Reducing Wrinkles When Sewing Linen Garments

Linen Jumpsuit

I love linen. It is soft and comfortable. But linen wrinkles. Badly.

There are ways to prep the fabric prior to sewing so linen will wrinkle a bit less.

A tip I learned from Sandra Betzina was to iron linen fabric with a very hot, dry iron BEFORE washing the fabric. After ironing, put the machine wash the linen in very hot water. Tumble in the dryer on the highest heat setting until the linen is completely dry.

The linen will shrink during this prep ... but the shrinkage will create small, soft folds in the fabric rather than the typical stiff creases that give linen that badly wrinkled look.

After sewing the fabric, machine or hand wash in cold water. Hang dry on a wide hanger immediately after the wash cycle stops. Or tumble dry on very low heat taking care to remove the fabric from the dryer as soon as the machine stops. 

The results: less wrinkled linen. Magic.

Happy Sewing!

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