Fabric & Care

Adaptive clothing gets washed far more often than ordinary clothing. A nighty worn by someone recovering at home may be changed two or three times a day. This page explains how to wash it so the velcro still grips after six months.

Close the velcro before you wash. This is the single most important step.

If velcro goes into the machine open, the hook side collects lint, hair and thread from everything else in the load. Once the hooks are full, they stop gripping, and no amount of washing brings them back. You can pick the lint out with a stiff brush or an old toothbrush, but it is slow and it never fully works.

Press every velcro strip closed before the garment goes in the machine or the bucket. It takes ten seconds and it is the difference between velcro that lasts a year and velcro that stops working in two months.

Washing

• Machine wash cold or in lukewarm water, up to 30 degrees Celsius. Hot water shortens the life of both the cotton and the velcro adhesive.
• Use a gentle or delicate cycle where available.
• Use ordinary mild detergent. Avoid fabric softener. Softener leaves a coating that stiffens cotton over time and, more importantly, clogs velcro hooks.
• Do not bleach. Bleach weakens cotton fibres at the seams, which are the parts under the most stress on a side-opening garment.
• Wash adaptive garments together where you can, rather than mixed with towels or woollens, which shed the most lint.
• Hand washing is fine. Same rules apply: close the velcro first, lukewarm water, no softener.

Drying

Line dry in shade. Direct Indian sun will fade the colour noticeably within a few weeks if the garment is dried outside every day, which it likely will be. Shade drying costs you nothing and the garment stays looking new far longer.

If you use a dryer, use low heat. High heat is the second most common cause of velcro failure after lint.

Ironing

Iron on medium heat if you want to. Never let the iron touch the velcro. Velcro hooks are plastic and they will melt flat on contact with a hot plate, which destroys the closure permanently. Iron around the strips, or place a cotton cloth over them.

About the fabric

Every Aasra garment is 100% cotton. This is a deliberate choice and it costs us more than a polyester blend would.

Post-surgical skin is more reactive than usual. Incision sites, areas under dressings and skin that has been under a brace or compression stocking all get irritated by synthetics, which trap heat and moisture against the body. Most of our customers wear these garments for sixteen hours a day, often lying down, often through an Indian summer. Cotton breathes, absorbs moisture, and can be washed repeatedly at high frequency without going hard or pilling.

Expect a small amount of shrinkage on the first wash, which is normal for cotton and is already accounted for in our size charts.

How long the velcro lasts

Our velcro is rated for more than 10,000 open and close cycles. To put that in context, a nighty changed three times a day for two months is opened around 180 times. The closures will outlast the recovery they were bought for, provided they are kept free of lint.

If a velcro strip on an Aasra garment stops gripping through normal use rather than lint build-up, write to us at aasra.connect@gmail.com and we will look at it.