Prepping The Wedding Gown Fabric

Today I took on the job of getting the silk from the gown cleaned, using the recommended Biz powder. It's a little scary if you haven't ever washed silk, but I grew up in a household that hand laundered all delicates, silks etc plus our woolies and they survived admirably! In fact I would venture to say that they probably fared better than with all the nasty chemicals and bulk handling of a dry cleaning.

Here's how the silk looks after laundering and rolling in a towel to remove excess water. I set up the large ironing board in the guest room, the surface I normally use for quilt prep ironing was a bit smaller than I needed. Covering the ironing board with a double layer of a clean white sheet protected the damp silk from any possible discoloration left behind from ironing other articles.

I used medium heat, a very clean iron and of course no steam.

You can see that the silk looks very nice, the large stains are all gone just a few tiny spots remain that are negligible and will mostly be covered by the hankies. The only real change is the softer hand of the silk now the sizing is gone. It was as well I stabilized each piece, silk ravels quickly and easily.

 Here is the list of the fabric sizes I harvested from the gown, all that's left are some smaller pieces that I may have to work in somehow to get close to the desired size.

2[32"x48"]

2[14"x40"]

2[10"x31"]

2[10"x24"]

4[10"x20"]

It doesn't seem like much and it is causing me some brain strain trying to figure out how to put it all together into a quilt top! I keep thinking there must be some software out there for the computer to figure it out for me, and it would have to be Mac compatible. Right now I have resorted to drawing diagrams on scrap paper!

I also removed the lace from the center panel of the skirt and laundered it, hoping to be able to use it on the quilt. Parts of it are a bit fragile, so I am waiting to see if I can do anything with it once I get the top pieced. Next week I must tackle the challenge of piecing all those bits together into a top, after that it should be a piece of cake, comparatively speaking!