If you plan to wash your hemp fabric by hand, use a gentle, all-natural detergent and make sure to rinse thoroughly. Tom’s soap works great for washing hemp items. Residual soap can leave cellulose, which oxidizes and leaves large brown spots on hemp, making it very important to soak hemp items in clean water thoroughly for a while after washing them.
If you want to soften hemp quickly, throwing it in the washer and dryer is perfectly fine. Use hot water to slowly ease open the hemp fibers and tumble dry it a few times to get it feeling soft quickly. Hemp should come out of the dryer soft and fluffy as any fabric.
Stretch the article to its natural shape and size and then iron it normally. For hemp that is colored, use an iron on the underside only.
You may add a cup of white vinegar to the rinse cycle to help remove all traces of soap and to soften the hemp. Vinegar also removes any smells from the hemp, leaving it smelling clean. It will not leave a vinegar smell once it has dried.
Line-drying in the sun can have a tendency of lightening hemp slightly, which can be a desirable thing in some items, or you might want to maintain the natural color of the hemp. Depending on what you want, you might want to make sure that it stays out of the sun too much.
Sun-lightening can help with stained or otherwise discolored hemp. If you’ve got a stained hemp item, wash it thoroughly, then air dry it in the sun for a long period of time to help naturally “bleach” the stain.
In general, most hemp items will dry extremely quickly compared to other fabrics. You can usually get away with not needing to worry much about drying them, especially on high heat.
