Learn How To Help Prevent Ballroom Dresses Losing Color And Being Harmed When Being Laundered
July 29, 2010
You have a closet full of beautiful ballroom dresses and you want to keep them looking that way. So, how do you plan to keep them as lovely as the day you bought them? Unlike some items of clothing, you do need to take special care of them to ensure that you can still use them dance after dance.
There are a couple of things to consider when you are thinking about how best to stow your ballroom dresses . To start with, you want to ensure that the color remains as true to the original as it is possible to. Sunlight is the enemy here. The most effective thing to do is to get a dark-colored plastic cover which will protect the dress from fading. If you suspend the dress in its cover in a place that has loads of room around it, this will help to reduce creasing of the cloth. Something else to look out for is mold. This can develop on your dresses and ruin them if they are stored in a damp place. So, a dry place is ideal and also open the cover to permit some air circulation.
Moving on from how to store our ballroom dance dresses, let’s now look at the best way to care for them in terms of keeping them clean and well-presented. The care instructions supplied by the manufacturer or your dress-maker are an excellent place to start.
The chances are that if it’s practice dancewear with no embellishments or trimmings, then it might be machine-washable and almost certainly hand-washable. In either event, wash in cold water with a mild detergent. All colored clothes should be washed in a diifferent load from whites and lighter-colored ones, otherwise the color can run and spoil them. For competition dancing clothes, again if they are not finished with decorations such as stones and beads, you can try hand or a very cool machine wash – no more than 30 degrees Centigrade – to avoid shrinkage. Generally-speaking, it’s all right to machine-wash fabrics such as georgette and Lycra, commonly used in ballroom dance dresses.
Pre-wash solutions can be good for heavy stains. You have to be particularly careful if the dress has dark-colored satin bias binding as this can stain the material. So you have to be meticulous in making sure that the binding and the fabric do not touch each other when still damp. This could appear like too much, but you will be pleased you did it.
If you are thinking the reason why you should not launder your ballroom dresses if they have any kind of stones or trimmings, then consider what can easily happen. Firstly, glue can break down and your stones fall off. What is more, your stones could damage the material of your dress and at the very least, they could well become lackluster during laundering. It is not worth taking the risk.
So what exactly do you do if you are unable to wash your ballroom dresses, but you would like to freshen them up and perhaps get rid of the wrinkles? It may well be feasible to hand-wash a body suit only. In this instance, you must do it with the dress inside out and be especially mindful to use cold water and gentle cleaning soap only. Always rinse in cold water and drip dry. If you cannot wash the any part of the dress, then you can try hanging it in a steamy place, for example from the shower rail.
Washing ballroom dresses is always fraught with danger. If your garment is particularly heavy when wet, it is probably best to place it over a clothes horse to give it some extra support and help prevent stretching. On the other hand, it could be hung over your bath to drip dry.
Finally, you should be very wary of ironing any part of your ballroom dress. Stretch fabrics should not be ironed at all. Otherwise, use a very cool temperature, especially with synthetic fabrics which can easily burn.
It is always a little worrying when you have invested time and money into buying ballroom dresses, that you may not be able to look after them properly. However, if you take note of the care instructions and the advice given in this article, then you stand a good chance of keeping them looking beautiful for longer.
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