How to stretch out a shirt

Learn how to fix a shirt that was shrunken

So you took our advice and shrunk your shirt too much. Or you just simply over-dried your shirt using the highest temperature on your dryer. Trust me, it's easy to do. So trust me, there is no reason to get upset and throw away your favorite shirt. I am always shrinking my custom t-shirts. Especially white t-shirts but hey, I guess it's not that hard for me to reprint a shirt if I didn't know this method.

You can usually avoid shrinking your shirt using by washing your items with cold water and air drying them instead of using a dryer, but if this does happen to you follow our steps below. So if you are ready to get started we can mold your t-shirt back to its original shape.

How to stretch out a shirt

• Normal Temperature water
• Baby shampoo and/ or conditioner
• Submerge your shirt 
• Strech the shirts out
• Let your shirt air dry

Use the perfect temperature water

Grab a large container or tub and fill it up with water. Use normal-temperature water. You do not want to use hot water. Hot water is usually how you shrink a shirt. So definitely stay away from that. You also do not want to use cold water. I really don't understand why I was just told not to use cold water. Ok, I'm just kidding. Using cold water just won't allow the shampoo or conditioner to activate as efficiently as it could just using a nice cool normal temperature.

Use baby shampoo or conditioner

You can just drop a couple of cap fulls of baby shampoo or conditioner in the water. You do not need any expensive shampoo or conditioner to make this work. It can be something you can find at a local $1 store. So after you have gathered your mixture go ahead and mix the water thoroughly with the shampoo and conditioner. After you have it nice and mixed, go ahead and submerge your shirt in the water and let it soak for 20 minutes. You want to make sure that the conditioner and shampoo are getting into the fibers of the t-shirt. While you are letting it submerge you can go ahead and take care of another task. 

Remove the shampoo from the shirt

Now that 20 minutes has passed go ahead and pour out the water. Refill your container with cool room temperature water resubmerge and ring out the shirt. Make sure that all of the shampoo is out of the t-shirt. Soak the shirt for another 10 minutes and ring out again. Make sure that you do not see any more ruminants of shampoo in the shirt. Now that you have the shirt residue free go ahead and prepare to dry the shirt.

Carefully stretch and Air dry the shirt

Lay the shirt on a bench with fresh towels. Roll the shirt up inside the towels as if you were packing the towels to take on a trip. This should get any last remains of water out of the shirts. Grab the shirt using one hand and stretch the opposite side lightly using the other hand. Do this from all angles of the shirt. Make sure that you do not stretch around the neck. No one wants a shirt with a stretched-out collar. If you do over-stretch it don't worry we also have a article letting you know how to shrink a shirt. Now that you have stretched your shirt correctly lay it out flat and wait for it to air dry. You can place a fan blowing in the direction of the shirt to speed up the process. 

Congratulations you have just stretched your shirt back out. If you have any comments please feel free to express them with us using the comment section below.