What is up with the seams on my t-shirts?

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I've bought a few tops recently which are basically plain fitted ladies' t-shirts but they have a 'peter pan' type collar attached to the neckline. After a few washes the seams down the sides have gone mental - all twisted round, so if the collar bit is straight the seams have twisted about 30 degrees with one going from my armpit nearly to the middle of my stomach and the same on the back. If I twist the shirt round so the seams are straight, the collar is all out of whack.

Why is this happening? I've tried straightening them after washing so they'll dry straight, but they refuse to go back to how they were when I bought them!

― Not the real Village People, Sunday, 24 June 2007 15:34 (eighteen years ago)

wild guess: these shirts did not cost very much

― nabisco, Sunday, 24 June 2007 19:09 (eighteen years ago)

(if it makes you feel any better, that's precisely what happened to the $6 t-shirt I bought from Forever 21 after spilling mustard on the one I was wearing)

― nabisco, Sunday, 24 June 2007 19:12 (eighteen years ago)

too much dryer heat. your shirts are fucked.

al gore says line-dry your shirts in the summer to save energy.

― moonship journey to baja, Sunday, 24 June 2007 19:13 (eighteen years ago)

I think it's less about the heat and more about the cheap / slipshod construction that allows them to get heat-pulled in twisty directions in the first place. I mean, you can bake the hell out of a well-made shirt, but it'll shrink and pull along its own lines, not all crooked and willy-nilly.

― nabisco, Sunday, 24 June 2007 19:22 (eighteen years ago)

not necessarily, sometimes finer/more expensive cottons are more susceptible to this kind of thing.

― jed_, Sunday, 24 June 2007 19:33 (eighteen years ago)

I don't own a dryer! It's not that. But yeah, they're cheap. I still don't know why they do it though, something to do with the 'grain' of the fabric?

― Not the real Village People, Sunday, 24 June 2007 19:53 (eighteen years ago)

you line-dried and it still shrank like that? that's bizarre.

is it rayon? you can't wash rayon in hot water, it'll lose its shape.

if it's a 100% cotton shirt i have no idea what's wrong.

― moonship journey to baja, Sunday, 24 June 2007 20:34 (eighteen years ago)

It sounds like the knit fabric was maybe cut on the bias or with pieces perpendicular instead of straight - some t-shirt knits have a definite "long" stretch direction (where the sides of the fabric want to curl inward) and a "short" stretch direction (where it doesn't stretch as much, but also doesn't curl up). If the pieces got cut crooked, or the front and back were cut with one on the long stretch direction and one in the short, it would probably get all catawampus.

― Jaq, Sunday, 24 June 2007 20:40 (eighteen years ago)

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