Every new wool person asks the same thing eventually. "But what if I shrink it?"
Here's what actually happens at Bumby before a single piece is cut and sewn. The fabric goes through a full preshrink process, boiling hot water and agitation, basically the worst case scenario for wool on purpose. We run it through until the fiber has done what it's going to do, tightened up, densified, become the dense and cozy thing it was always meant to be.
Then the lycra does its job. The yarn we use is core-spun, which means there's a lycra core wrapped in wool. The lycra gives the fabric its stretch and recovery. But it also acts as a kind of structural anchor. Once the wool has felted to the point it's going to felt, the lycra holds it there. It can't keep going. The structure is set.
So when you wash your Bumby in cold water on a gentle cycle, you are nowhere near the conditions it already survived in our preshrink process. You're fine. The fabric has already been through it.
This is one of those things we don't talk about enough. The durability you feel in a Bumby piece isn't accidental. It's the result of a lot of deliberate, unglamorous work before the product ever gets to you.