If you’re here, chances are one of your sweaters has ribbed edges (known as "ribs" or "ribbing" in our little corner of the textile world) that have gone a bit baggy. The good news is that we’ve found a fairly simple fix: give them a good blast of steam with an iron (or a steamer, if you have one).

Here’s the proof on a wool sweater (because, as Confucius famously said, “a GIF is worth a thousand words”):

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And if you’re still not 100% happy with the result, you can then dip the ribbing into a bowl of boiling water: it should shrink by another few millimetres.

This trick works on the cuffs of your sweaters, but also on the collar and the hem:

Rather pleased with our discovery, we tried the method on materials other than wool, and it turns out it works just as well on 100% cotton ribbing:

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On the other hand, it doesn’t work at all on acrylic ribbing, or on the cotton-elastane ribbing of sweatshirts and hoodies. If you want to tighten the ribbing on your sweatshirts and hoodies, you’ll have to take them to your local tailor: for ten euros or so, they can unpick it completely, cut it down by a few centimetres and sew it back on.

Who am I to give you advice on caring for your clothes?
My name is Claire, and I keep track of production at Loom. Basically, I try to keep things from going out of stock on our site (it’s not perfect yet, but I’m working on it), and I make sure at every stage of manufacturing that our clothes meet our quality standards.
On top of that, I’m passionate about anything that helps our clothes last longer: care, repairs and good old grandma’s tricks. I love giving clothes “a little extra soul”: reworking them, mending them, giving them another chance when nobody wants them any more. On these pages, I’ll try to pass on whatever I know that might come in handy.
One last thing: I’ve genuinely tried every tip you’ll find on this site and checked for myself that it works (in other words, it’s not just copied and pasted from a quick internet search). If you have new ones to suggest, feel free to leave a comment below this article.