Lace Recovery

Last weekend, I was staying at my mother-in-law's to attend the SAGE inservice day for teachers, and asked to see her 50+ year old wedding gown.  I knew of it's existence of course; I think Meg had briefly contemplated wearing it until we realized that Aileen must have weighed about 95 pounds when she got married!  Aileen had mentioned it to me again when she heard I was sewing Mandy's dress and offered the dress for use.  We both thought it would be great to try to incorporate elements from other family wedding gowns into Mandy's dress.   

Mandy and I looked at it and quickly realized that it could a wonderful starting point for her veil.  The advantage to using it for the veil and not the actual dress, is that someone else could conceivably wear the veil later.  Who knows, maybe it could become a family heirloom! There was an especially lovely beaded and sequinned section from the bodice front that we could use for the bottom edge.  As well, there were many layers of gorgeous delicate Chantilly lace; all aged to a beautiful ivory colour.  Anyway, the dress hadn't been stored very well or cleaned beforehand.  It was not in wearable shape.  When she pulled it from the trunk, an extremely strong mothball and incense smell wafted up and nearly choked us.  We had to put the dress outside in order to be able to breathe, it was that strong. 

I left it out there for the two days we stayed but the smell did not diminish.  I bundled it into a plastic garbage bag and into the back of the truck for the 8 hour return trip.  Once home, I hung the dress up in the basement bathroom but after an hour or so I realized that I would have to deal with the smell immediately; it was snowing so I couldn't hang it outside.  I took a deep breath and dissolved a hefty amount of Oxyclean in a tub full of water and immersed the whole thing.  The water turned grey pretty quickly but the smell lingered.  I tried vinegar and Febreze next.  No change.  The dress looked cleaner, but the awful odour stayed.  As a last resort, I cut away the lace that I could salvage and tossed the rest of the damaged dress.  With only the lace itself to deal with, I tried again; this time with a few drops of Nilodor added to the wash water in the tub.  A few swishes and voila, the smell was finally vanquished!

I now had about 4 meters of usable lace, 2 different patterns (see below), plus the beaded piece from the bodice (see above).  I also saved a rather large piece of all-over lace fabric from the skirt.  I'm not sure how I will use it, but it may come in handy for something. 

Oops!  Almost forgot!  Mandy tried on the muslin of the bodice and it fit nearly perfectly!  Just needed a little tweaking at the top.  I left her with the assignment of finding an ivory strapless bra that fits so we can incorporate it into the dress.