Скачать или смотреть Ground in dirt on a 70s rayon velvet wedding dress meets its match with scrubbing and Fels Naptha

Scrubbing a white rayon velvet vintage wedding dress- a first for me! Obviously I'm not recommending this on just any vintage velvet-and would say only attempt if you feel you have nothing to lose by trying. In this particular case with this particular 70s velvet which I believe to be all rayon and not a silk and rayon blend, it worked to first do a soak in Retro Wash and a bit of Dawn. The water wasn't changing color, which led me to believe the dirt or whatever was on it was really ground into the nap of the velvet. I've had success in the past with gentle scrubbing and Fels Naptha soap on other garments, so I took the plunge and decided to try it on this. I worked on each area one by one, and after I felt I had done all the areas (turns out I missed some, which I didn't see until the dress was dry) I then rinsed it-coaxing out the bodice while just damp to get it closer back to its original size. The velvet skirt length did shrink as lexpected, sol hand stitched
the under skirt hem a bit shorter to remedy. So my main takeaway from this experiment: the velvet handled scrubbing better than I expected. Did I get lucky with all the scrubbing to not cause holes? Maybe!
Would I attempt this on an older velvet or one with silk ? Definitely not. Could I have gone for a second round of soaking and scrubbing to try to get the areas I missed? | could have and it was temping but sometimes you have to know when to stop and be satisfied with what did improve. The XS dress is now available in the wedding section of my Etsy shop. #oldvintage #weddingdress #cleaningvintage #cleaningvelvet #vintageweddingdresscleaning #whitevelvet