This is a brief post/plea for help.
Helen wanted to reuse her wedding dress. With a view to that, I dry cleaned the fabrics before I made up the dress. I wasn't really sure what she might want, what might suit. I reckoned the main possibilities were dyeing the fabric - maybe green which Helen looks fabulous in - and shortening the skirt.
I don't know yet about the dyeing but Helen would like the dress full length, just without the train. She doesn't like ballerina or tea length and anyway I'm not sure the hugging back would suit that.
Unfortunately there is deep ingrained mud all around the bottom of the dress and lining. Worse, the fabric is damaged in places so that even if I get the mud out there is still a problem.
I decided to detach the skirt lining (silk charmeuse / very fine crepe back satin silk) from the dress and work with that first in terms of stain removing - no success. Any suggestions? There's really nothing to lose now, is there?
I detached the waist stay, unpicked the horsehair braid hem and took out the horsehair and the curtain string weights. The train can be removed at a later date. I hope the dress doesn't shrink too much in length then it's possible I might be able to hem it slightly shorter to cover the abraded fabric into the inside. I'll see. However I won't know until I see if I can even get the stains which are not just at the hem, out.
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| Dismantling |
I haven't done anything in terms of attempted cleaning with the outside dress as yet though Rory did try to remove some of the stains for the display.
I’d welcome any suggestions for heavy duty station removal of mud from damaged ivory sandwashed silk!
I'm hoping the dress might be salvageable in some form!
Thank you
