Fixing A Wrinkled Prom Dress

I have what is undoubtedly someone's old 100% acetate prom dress. I found it in a thrift store and bought it to sing in at a concert. Not able to afford dry cleaning, I made the decision to launder it with Woolite on the delicate cycle. I would only be out my $10 investment if this went badly.

It was yards and yards of skirt over crinoline. I removed it promptly from the washer and hung it to dry, smoothing out the fabric by hand. It dried beautifully; there were no moisture stains and the original stain that necessitated the washing was now gone. What remained were yards of wrinkled fabric. I had tried earlier to iron on the reverse side, on the iron's acetate setting (1), but it really wasn't working. I just had less visible wrinkles everywhere.

I found this page, read all the advice, and did the following. I got a good cotton tea towel from the kitchen and then changed the iron setting to 5 (low steam), and made sure there was water in the iron. I placed the towel on the front side of the fabric and ironed a test patch. The wrinkles were gone but the weave of the tea towel was visible, imprinted on the acetate fabric! I then switched to ironing the cotton-towel-on-top-of-acetate on the reverse, and the wrinkles began disappearing. Fabulous! Apparently what is needed is indeed light steam and pressure.

I ironed most of the dress, but there were lots and lots of gathers at the waist. I then went and found a fine cotton handkerchief, and went back to ironing the front side of the fabric, with the handkerchief between the iron and the acetate. This worked well but was incredibly tricky. The iron is large to get into all those gathers, and I was beginning to iron in new wrinkles. So I stopped.

I hung up the gown, and began to gently steam over the creases at the gathers as best I could in midair, with the iron directly against the acetate. It worked! The fabric relaxed enough, and I was super careful to not leave the iron in any one place for more than two seconds. I steamed/ironed until I felt the front looked nice enough, then quit while I was ahead. It almost might have been worth it, to pay a dry cleaner not to spend all this time, but at least I know that, in the future, I can use this method to look great in a recycled (but wrinkled) dress.