hi everyone!
so i was just going through my closet (gettin ready to take some pics for the site!) and i tried on a couple of dresses... and it seems that they shrunk after i washed them!! its not even horizontal shrinkage, but vertical.. they are all a lot shorter! any way to stretch them?

the only idea i had is placing tiny weights on the bottom of the hem and waiting for gravity.. but now it seems very sci-fi.

any advice will be appreciated! thank you.

ps. the dresses are a cotton/jersey blend i think.. i cut the tags out.

This may sound odd, but it can work with cotton Woven fabrics; but if you say its a jersey, that means its a knit and it may not work. Get the garment wet in cold water and very gently pull on the bottom with two hands, one hand at the bottom and one further up top. (be careful not to pull too hard and rip the fabric and/or the hem). Make sure that you only pull vertically and not diagonally, if you pull diagonally you will mess with the grain of the fabric and will end up with a funny shaped, warped dress.

If you find you run in to shrinking problems a lot, consider air-drying tricky garments, even laying them flat on a table works. Also putting any garments that have elastic/spandex-lycra in the hot dryer can shorten the lifespan/effectiveness of the spandex, so its a good idea to air dry or set your dryer to a low heat.

i hope this works for you :)

A low tech solution that sometimes works for me is to just wear a garment that has shortened itself... body heat can loosen and lengthen pieces. this tends to work better for looser knits... just an idea and NOT very scientific.

Some things I've read are to wash it in cold water and hang dry it upside down, pulling on it to gently stretch it. I accidentally shrunk a wool sweater and this worked out, should work better with cotton though :)

Put the garment on while it's wet and stretch it down if it's a dress or tee, and if its jeans/shorts do lots of squats and stretches. Uncomfortable but it works! and you can check your progress while you're wearing it