michelehuston

if it says dry clean only..that is the best bet!

Prism99

Most likely the lumpiness was caused by machine agitation. Polyester batting that isn't needle-punched or treated with bonding agents can't take machine agitation. (Top loaders are hard on all kinds of quilts.) Most likely many of the commercial comforters have this kind of batting.

I think I would still take a chance and wash/dry myself rather than dry cleaning. However, I would use a top-loading washing machine and do all the agitation by hand. The method requires filling the machine with soap and water, turning the machine off, adding the comforter, hand agitating by pushing down on the quilt, turning the machine to "spin", adding rinse water, turning off the machine, hand agitating, turning the machine to "spin", etc. The idea is to skip all the machine agitation cycles of the machine. Spinning is not hard on a comforter the way that machine agitation is.

With a commercial comforter, I would not trust even the milder agitation of a front-loading machine; if the batting is polyester without needle-punching or bonding agents, I would be afraid that even that much agitation would cause the batting to lump.

It's probably a good idea to search the comforter for a "contents" tag. If there's a lot of rayon in the comforter's fabric, that might be another problem for washing because rayon can shrink a *lot*. I would not be as concerned about primarily cotton fabric shrinking. The biggest problem is the batting, I think.

TonnieLoree

That is called a Duvet Cover.

Sandynorm

Thank you all for the ideas. I love the idea of a cover, but he specifically picked this one out for the seashells as I am crazy about the beach. I like the idea of spot cleaning it, it is mostly the top edge, and then putting it out in the sunshine, for starters anyway.

Sandynorm

I also do not see any fiber content label, just dry clean only. The outside is cotton, feels like it could be 100%, there is not much quilting which does concern me.

wolfkitty

If it doesn't need to be cleaned right away, you could be looking for fabric to make a cover, and have your BF help you look and find one he likes. Then get the cover made, and clean it just before putting the new cover on!