Fabric Care
Preservation started the moment I brought home my fabrics.
In order to avoid leaving skin oils on my fabrics and gown, I washed my hands and forearms before working with this project, and in the middle of sessions if I noticed my hands getting sweaty or if I touched my face. I made sure everyone else washed their hands, too. It was a little obsessive, yes. Some sources I read say you need liquid gloves, or white gloves to avoid this, and maybe with non-polyester fabrics you do need to be this careful. But I was on a budget, and had other ways of minimizing oils. I didn't have any problems with touching and handling leading to yellowed spots that I could see. I also washed my dress after wearing it before preserving it to be safe for the long-term, since the dress and I did have fun on our wedding day!
Handling fabrics and exposure to elements (such as dirt, sunlight, and cats) can age and cause discoloration on fabrics. I made sure to handle my fabrics very carefully from start to finish, always ensuring they touched only clean surfaces and hands once they had been pre-treated with a Woolite hand-washing in my very clean bathtub. No food or drink besides water was allowed in the sewing room for a full year. I think I only broke my rule once by accident, and quickly realized and scooted right out of there.
I also made sure to keep sunlight off of the fabrics and gown to avoid yellowing, since I knew I'd be working on them for a long time (I didn't expect a full year at the outset, but hey, it worked). I used a muslin practice dress cut down the back to wrap over the bodice in progress. Then when the skirt was added and it was too big to use what extra fabrics I had to keep covering it on Glinda, I resorted to hanging dark curtains over the blinds. That gave extra protection from sunlight as well as the heat it adds to the upstairs room in our Florida house. When there was a long period when I wasn't working on the gown, I put everything in the preservation box and brought it downstairs to a dark room.
I vacuumed in there pretty regularly and generally tried to keep the cat out, especially when the skirt was exposed if I left it uncovered overnight while in the middle of something. She's pretty innocent, but I didn't want to have her calico hairs showing up on my gown after all that work. And definitely not any claw marks if she did decide to experiment! Rather than closing the room door, I used the huge gown preservation box to block the doorway but allow air to continue circulating into the room.
I also didn't leave pins in the fabrics, at least not those that would be used in the actual gown since they caused tiny rust spots after a few months.
Oh, and another thing. White fabrics + needles + hands = blood spots. I was so careful to pull my hands away when I pricked myself! I did end up with a tiny spot somewhere on the dress (I'm not telling where), but overall I was able to stop the bleeding from minor pricks and continue working pretty quickly, and avoided making any mess.
Gown Cleaning and Preservation
Although I didn't use it as much before the wedding as I thought I would, I did use a preservation kit to protect my gown and materials over time during sewing and for transport when I took it to my mom's house for a couple of work days when I needed extra hands.
I had decided not to use a dry-cleaner unless my dress got very dirty, and it looked like I was going to be able to stick with that plan. So about two weeks after the wedding, I finally pulled the gown of of its box, which it had traveled in to the wedding, and washed it. I dunked the hem into the bathtub with Woolite, just like I'd done when pre-treating it. But this time, I had dirt around the hem, which I scrubbed off using a toothbrush, Shout stain-treating spray, and a couple hours on my knees. I scrubbed the fashion outer fabric, the two mirror organza layers under that, and the lining layer on the innermost part of the skirt. I also scrubbed one little grease spot on the skirt from our wedding day mishap with the car. After that, I dunked the whole gown in and out a few times and let it soak for a bit to wash it, and let the dirty water out to run fresh water for a few rinsing dunks. Then I turned on the shower and rinsed some more! I thought that much rinsing was important because detergents generally continue collecting dirt, including detergent that remains in fabrics, so I wanted to get all of that out before storage. I also washed the petticoat in the same way, but less scrubbing since the tulle was delicate, being pretty old. I hung both up to air dry, using a drying rack to support the heavy skirt.
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| Toothbrush did the trick nicely! It took time and a lot of Shout, but worked well. |
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| Before hanging, I pressed some water out onto towels. |
The other bit of cleaning I had to do was to clean the sash that had gotten dirty before the wedding. Fun story: the forecast for our wedding went from rain to scattered storms to thunderstorms to severe thunderstorms. As I put on my gown on our wedding day, those were entering our area and announced themselves with thunder. Getting from the cabin where we got dressed to the first look location was an adventure. My aunt helped me get my whole big white fluffy self into the van to take me there, and as we went, it looked like a small bridge we needed to cross was flooded over! Fortunately, it was just covered with water that wasn't clearing quickly enough and visually blended in with the lake it went over, and we were able to drive across it. We got to the first look spot, got one good shot while also getting poured on, and decided to go somewhere with more cover. As we got out at our new location, we found that the tail end of my sash had been caught in the rolling van door, and had black, chunky grease on it. We tried to wash it out, but nothing helped. Not the Tide To Go stick I bought for this kind of thing, not dish soap with degreaser, not scrubbing... I kept cool. I was determined to roll with it. We were able to tuck the dirty end of the sash up into the waistband so that I ended up with a three-looped, one-tailed bow. It worked, actually. Nobody knew if I didn't tell them! Still, I thought this might be something I'd need a dry-cleaner for--at least it'd be cheaper than the whole gown. |
| Poor thing, this is how it looked after scrubbing it at the wedding. The spots were more black than they look in the photo. |
Preserving the veil was a little tricky, because it got scrunched even before the wedding since I finished it well in advance. (That was part of why I ended up making a second layer, actually.) This time I used tissue up under the top part of it to try to prevent the gathers at the comb from settling into folds, but I have a feeling it's going to lose some body no matter what, unless I had somewhere to hang it up. (I don't. I don't even have enough space to keep the big gown box in our house. Even if we had a basement or accessible attic, I couldn't put it there because of humidity or heat. Fortunately my mom has my old bedroom where it can go.) I'm supposing that if it ever has another opportunity for use that we could lay it out or hang it up in a way that could help fluff it back out.
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| To preserve a gown you have to tuck materials into the folds of the fabric and avoid creases. Also avoid cat hair on the bed with a clean bedsheet. |
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| I got this "archival quality" preservation kit on Ebay for $40 and followed the instructions in this video. The box included acid-free tissue paper, a bust shape to put in the dress, a viewing window, and a shipping box to put the preservation box in. I also bought unbleached muslin to line the box with based on my research, and also saved silica gel packets to put into the box outside of the wrappings to keep it drier. |
