How to wash and block your crochet swatch
Merrian Holland 
When making any item of clothing out of crochet, an important part of the process is washing & blocking your swatch.
Some of you might be asking "what is a swatch?", I have written a blog post about that : here
Why do we need to wash our swatch before starting our project?
Because I presume at some point you're going to wash your garment. The fabric will change after washing, especially if you're using natural fibres. Not only do the stitch patterns open up and grow in size, but the fabric softens, due the removal of chemicals used in the factory processing of the yarn, giving a softer drape.
What are the implications of this? Well, if you are starting a new project, following a pattern, your stitch height and width of your swatch may no longer match that of the designer, so your garment won't work up to the correct size. It might also be that you no longer like the look of the stitch pattern with the yarn and that hook size. Worst case scenario is that a finished garment that fitted you perfectly before washing is now suddenly too big with arms that seem to have grown in length.
I have made a video tutorial showing how I wash and block my crochet swatches: https://youtu.be/ULKn5UWxm_U
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