How to Avoid Moths in your Knitwear
Clothes moths can cause huge amounts of damage to your wardrobe and furnishings. They seem to be becoming more common these days, and their breeding season is in Summer, just when your knitwear is probably being stored until colder months. From experience, I find they tend to start with your favourite sweaters and most expensive knitwear, and they often nibble holes in awkward areas (in the centre of your chest for example)!
Clothes moths are very small, and golden in colour. The moths themselves don’t cause the damage to your clothes, but they lay eggs on it and it’s the larvae that eat their way through your knitwear.
This is an example of a cashmere sweater that has been badly eaten by moths (it’s actually one of the case studies in my book ‘Visible Creative Mending for Knitwear’). While I’m very much in favour of treating moth holes as creative opportunities, it’s still worth trying to protect your knitwear from moths!
A great wool or cashmere scarf, sweater or cardigan can last you many years with good care. Since starting my visible mending service, I’ve seen a lot of moth holes and sad looking knitwear, and I often get asked how to avoid wool moths… so here are some tips for deterring moths and storing your knitwear.
Make sure your knitwear is clean when you put it away. Moths lay their eggs in dirt so the larvae have something to eat, so always wash your knitwear before storing it. I have instructions for how to wash your wool or cashmere knitwear if you need them.
Lavender, cedar, rosemary, mint, thyme, and cloves are all natural scents that deter moths in wool clothing. Put dried herbs in sachets to keep in your drawers, and change them every 6 months when the scent fades. Pick the scent you like best.
Why not try making your own lavender or herb bags? If you really keen, you could even grow and dry your own herbs- bees particularly like the flowers of rosemary, mint and thyme, so this could be great for your clothes, bees and for cooking!
Store your knitwear with sachets of lavender or your herb of preference to deter moths. Change these when the scent fades.
3. Store your clothes somewhere that is sealed. In a box, a sealable bag, a chest, but somewhere moths can’t get to.
4. If you already have moths in your wool clothing, and you think there might be eggs on your clothes, freeze the garment at -8 degrees centigrade for at least 48 hours to kill any active larvae or eggs.
5. Heating fabric to 49 degrees for over 30 minutes will also kill off any life (which you could do in a washing machine) but I don’t recommend this for cashmere or wool. It would be useful if you had other fibres that were being damaged.
6. Again, moths like dirt, so if you have them, vacuum regularly, and empty the cleaner regularly so no eggs or larvae stay in the house. This is particularly good for protecting your home furnishings, but also helps ensure you don’t have moths in the house.
7. You can buy odourless moth strips for you wardrobe, and sticky pheromone strips to attract the male moths in your house.
8. If you have a lot of wool moths, get the professionals in before they eat everything! They normally start with your favourite, most expensive sweater, but once you have lots they’ll eat pretty much anything!
I know I’ve talked about keeping your clothes clean, and this really only applies to storing your woollens (unless you have an infestation, in which case keep anything you value in sealed containers when not wearing it!). If you wash your woollens after every use it will reduce the lifespan of your garment- so if it’s not actually dirty, just remember you can air wool items instead of washing, as wool doesn’t retain odours.
Moth damage repaired with colourful darning.
If you’ve already had some moth damage to your wool or cashmere knitwear, then now is the time to learn to mend. Mending your knitwear will save you the cost of buying new, reduces the amount of textile waste going to landfill, and can be a great way to give your garment a new lease of life by making the repairs visible and creative.
You can start mending with just a needle, yarn and scissors- you don’t need much to get started!