September 26, 20170 found this helpful
Best Answer
The answer is - probably no way to make this completely white so make a big decision before making an attempt - worst case scenario - ruin the gown beyond repair.
- You cannot use dye to whiten a garment which has already been dyed. Instead, you need to remove the dye that is already there. There are many different chemicals which can be used to remove dye: All of these chemicals have the potential for damaging your fabric.
- If your gown happens to be polyester (or even has polyester) here is something to know - Polyester is typically colored during the fabrication process, not really "dyed".
- Satin can be a mixture of many different fabrics and from a gown that old you will not be able to determine what type of mixture (unless there is a tag still in the garment - if there ever was one).
- Therefore, any type of color remover you try may change the color, may deteriorate the fabric, but will rarely remove the color and leave it white/white.
- Not all dyes can be removed. Some dyes will retain their color no matter what chemical or conditions you use to try to strip the dye. Others will change to a completely different and unexpected color. It is impossible to predict whether the dyes in a specific garment are possible to remove, because you never know which dyes were used to color it.
- A word about chlorine bleach: Chlorine bleach is extremely damaging to both synthetic fibers, such as nylon or polyester, and to animal fibers such as wool or silk. Never use chlorine bleach on any fiber that is not 100% cotton or linen. Chlorine bleach will cause a permanent unattractive yellowing of polyester fiber.
- You can try color remover (available from various dye companies) but it may not work; it's hard to predict how that will react to synthetic fabrics.
- Is the Nottingham lace pure white and is it removable or will it have to be treated the same as the satin?
- Here are a couple of links that have a lot of information pertaining to this subject - well worth reading.
- www.pburch.net/.../index.html
- www.pburch.net/.../discharge_chemicals.shtml
have you consider taking this gown to a professional cleaners and asking their opinion on trying to remove the color? They may have someone who specializes in doing work like this or you can Google Professional fabric dyers with your zip code and ask about doing this for you.
Is it possible to add a white skirt over the original (under the lace) and maybe some sort of short white top? Only a professional can do thing like this but its just a thought.
Here is a link that explains about satin material.
fashionstylefan.com/.../
