Cleaning two Edwardian dresses from a donated box of lace. An under dress is also made from salvage.

I received a message a while ago asking me if I would be interested in a vintage lace box. When I opened the package and discovered that there were also dresses inside, I was quite surprised. This one is in cotton, I think it's cotton, a very transparent material, a little goaic. And I think it's embroidered by hand. And here are some of the pretty pieces of linen and lace. And I guess some of them were made by hand by her grandmother. It's just a nice combination of linen and lace. Here is the other garment that was there. And I think this one is also from the 1910s. And I later discovered that it had been worn by the donor for her wedding in 1982 and that it had been originally worn by her grandmother. Isn't it cute? So, my plan for each dress is to do a basic cleaning for this first dress that I call the lace dress and try to remove this stain. This one is in very good condition. This one really needs a little more work. It had a really tiny 22-inch size that seemed to have been redone at some point in the past. I think someone removed the size and shortened it. So I'm going to start with the lace dress. And as I said, it was in very good condition. There was just one stain. Of course, it's still on the front. And I just wanted to try to use a more minimalist approach to remove the stains. I just tried with baking soda and water. I let it dry and rinsed it. And even if it helped, it certainly didn't remove the stain. So I thought I was going to try to wash it later. And it's cotton. So I can wash it at a fairly warm temperature. The ribbon that is there is a recent vintage ribbon. I guess it was made in the 80s for his wedding. So, there is no origin on the dress. And I'm not worried about the colors dripping on it. So, I just put it in retro washing. And I soaked it for an hour. And then I rinsed it well. You can see that the water has changed color, which is always a good sign. So, I'm going to increase the detachment and use my usual product. Hydrogen peroxide. Water and baking soda. I make a solution of the two. Then I add baking soda. I let it rest for an hour and I rinse. And it worked. So, once again, I rinsed it well. I put it on a net drain until it no longer flows. Then I let it roll on a napkin. So, it cleaned up well and the fabric is in pretty good condition. I just had to do a repair on a dental area. But look how pretty it is. And I love these little buttons on the back which are in a way crochet buttons. So, now that it's done, let's move on to the embroidered dress. So, when I decided to take it apart, and it's a bit difficult to see here, but it's a very pale pink. I think at one time, there was a pink underlayer on this transparent dress. And again, this size was very thin. So, I said to myself that as long as I was going to take it apart, let's try to enlarge it a little bit. It took a while. So, there is a piece of belt that is whipped and that somehow connects the two. It took about an hour, but I managed to separate all the pieces. And then there is proof that the size piece here had been slightly returned. So, after letting it out, I got a measurement of about 24 inches. I decided to strengthen the end of this belt a bit with vintage fabric, then use serger ribbon to finish the bottom, which also gives me something to tie. So I tied the serger ribbon to the belt, then to the corsage. And now, I'm going to do the same thing by fronting the skirt and adjusting it to the serger ribbon. And instead of tying the skirt at the top of the belt, I chose to tie it at the bottom, which gave me a few more centimeters in length. Once again, I think that at one point, it was shortened in the past to probably update it. So, now, I'm going to do an additional fronting in this one. In fact, I'm just starting with my first backstitch fronting. And I'm going to be a little softer with this one. I don't really know how this one will react to cleaning, but it turned out pretty well. So, after this soaking and initial rinsing, I'm going to use Orbus, which is a neutral pH detergent. So, I keep the water temperature pretty cool. I think I had it at about 82. And look at the yellow water. So, I'm going to rinse it. And then the same thing persists. So, instead of just trying the soda bicarbonate, I'm going to go straight to my usual mixture of hydrogen peroxide and soda bicarbonate. Well, I ended up doing it twice. I only let it act for 15 minutes because I wanted to be a little more careful with that and so it wasn't quite gone after 15 minutes. So I did it again twice and it improved it by about 95%. Then I let it dry in the open air. Then I decided to create one for this underlying dress. And I wanted to try to make a kind of high shirt. And then I had an old one that I thought I was going to use as a pattern, but I didn't want there to be lace on the top because it would certainly be seen on this one. So I improvise a little. And again, I don't know how to make patterns, but I just used the one that already exists and I used recovery fabric and I managed to get it to work. So, I have a skirt that seemed to have been recovered in the Marta collection and that, I thought, would go very well with that. And I found a similar fabric to make the high shirt. So, I'm going to wash both first. And I do that in Synthropol just to remove the finishes or anything that could be there and that would help to better accept the dye. And I just use an all-purpose dye because we work with cotton. I have a large stainless steel pot that I use for dyeing. And I'm trying to guess how much liquid dye to put here. So I have a little sample of the color of this fabric. And you'll see later why I chose pink. And I just wanted to give it that pretty pink hue. So, I'm not really precise about a particular hue, but I just wanted it to be in this general family. So, I also put serger ribbon, which I finally did not use. And I let it work for half an hour. And then, once it was done, I did a little rinsing, then a washing, then another rinsing and I let it dry in the open air. So, I took these pattern pieces and here is the construction of this kind of corset, kind of high shirt. And I make English seams because it allows to have sharper edges on the seam allowances, i.e. glass against glass, then right against right. This caraco will not make me gain weight at once, but it certainly does and it goes very well with this skirt. So, as I found them, it looks like the bottom of the sleeves had been cut at the origin, so I would like to finish them. So, I actually had an earring with old lace around that went really well with the dress. So, I don't know how long it's been washed. So, I thought I should wash it before continuing, then let it dry in the open air. And I'm going to sew it by hand. And look how much better it is. I think it's really pretty on there. The buttons were here. There were several missing. So, I'm going to put glass. J'ai mis des boutons en verre pour les remplacer. Et maintenant, pour cette ceinture, j'ai une magnifique sélection de rubans vintage. Et celui-ci, je le garde depuis un bon moment. Et maintenant, je sais pourquoi il est parfait pour ce projet. J'ai l'impression qu'il y a tellement de choses dans mon stock que j'ai gardé et que tous s'assemblent pour fonctionner sur ces différents projets ces derniers temps. Et j'en suis très heureuse. Je vais donc créer une ceinture, car elle servira à couvrir la ceinture à baleine, car la robe en avait une à l'origine. J'ai donc fait des fronces à la machine et aussi des fronces à la main sur les bords et aussi au milieu, pour qu'elle ne soit pas trop rigide. Je voulais juste qu'elle ait l'air plus usé et qu'elle ait été utilisée pendant un certain temps. Une fois que c'était terminé, je l'ai mise dans l'eau et je l'ai laissé sécher sur le mannequin pour qu'elle prenne forme. Et regardez comme c'est joli. La voici. Oh mon dieu, j'adore cette robe. Et j'ai réussi à agrandir la taille aussi. Et ce bicolore n'est-il pas joli? Nous avons le crème et le rose, et juste cette touche de rose qui ressort en dessous. Regardez la magnifique broderie. Encore une fois, je pense que tout a été fait à la main. Je trouve que c'est une robe absolument magnifique. Et j'adore la joue du rose, qui est bien sûr entièrement amovible. Le nouveau propriétaire n'est pas obligé d'utiliser ce rose avec ou il peut l'utiliser pour d'autres objets. Mais je trouve que c'est une robe absolument mignonne, adorable et magnifique. Et celle-ci aussi. Juste deux robes des années 1910 avec ce look édouardien classique, les dentelles et les tissus transparents de belle qualité. Je trouve que c'était un tel plaisir de travailler sur ces projets. Et c'est un plaisir et un honneur d'être les gardiennes temporaires de ces robes jusqu'à ce qu'elles partent pour leur prochain voyage. Et je considérerais que ces deux robes sont à nouveau portables. Ce serait tellement agréable si elles devaient être portées à nouveau pour un mariage. C'était merveilleux. J'ai travaillé très dur dessus, mais je suis vraiment contente du résultat.