How to Wash Vintage Doll Garments

List of Ingredients:

Oxyclean Stain Remover

Dawn Dish Soap (generic works, too)

Hot-Warm Water

Cool Water

Large plastic or glass containers for soaking doll garments

Towel

WHAT IS "OXYCLEAN"?

WHERE DO I GET IT?

The main ingredient I use to clean vintage doll garments is "Oxyclean Stain Remover". It's a powdered clothing whitening agent (it's not bleach) that comes in about three differently-sized plastic buckets. I usually get the biggest since I do quite a lot of doll garments (it costs about $10 - U.S. funds, but the smallest is about $3 - U.S. funds). It's a product for adding to your load in the washing machine. It's for soaking garments in to remove stains, as well as simply as a whitening agent for the whole load. If you have Wal-mart in your country, they carry it in the laundry soap section of the store. I don't know of a comparable product to Oxyclean if you are not able to get it where you live. I do know that there is something like it being sold on Ebay in the vintage doll clothing category, but I've never used it so I can't say if it is safe or not, effective or not. You'd have to order it and try it on an old, non-valuable doll garment before using it on one you value.

DIRECTIONS:

Important: Before doing this to a nice doll garment, please practice on an old one first.

Vintage doll garments are made of delicate fabrics. They've been around for 40, 50, or 60 or more years. The fibers in the fabric weaken over time and become fragile and can tear. Handle them gently.

(1) Remove any vintage flowers, pearl shoulder straps, safety pins, etc., from the dresses/slips/underpants before putting them in to soak. You can resew them on or reattach them after the garments have dried and been ironed.

Don't put doll nylons in with the garments! The brown color will run. Wash them separately.  You may want to just wash them separately in warm-hot dish-soap water first, and if that doesn't do it, wash them in the Oxyclean solution. 

(2) For any colored garments or a garment with colored trims, you want to soak that garment in cool water for a bit in order for the cool water to set the colored fabric dye. If you put a garment with color on it into hot/warm water, the dye can bleed.
 
(3) I take the largest round plastic mixing bowl I have and run hot-warm water (NOT hot-hot water - it can cause the fabric dyes to bleed as well as damage fragile fabric) in it all the way to the top. You can also use a large plastic container or glass container.

(4) While the water is running, add a dash or two of dish soap - this helps take out the dirt from the garment while the Oxyclean is working to remove age-related dinginess. I throw in the dish soap and the Oxyclean at the same time.
 
(5) Check the directions on the side of the Oxyclean container for how much to put in per how much water. (Some vintage garments are very, very delicate and could disintegrate if you use this Oxyclean solution at full strength, so I would highly recommend using only about 1/4 of the Oxyclean according to the directions per how much water. If this doesn't get the garment clean, and it hasn't put any holes in the garment, I'd increase it to 1/2, then 3/4 and so on. But, keep a very careful watch on the garment while soaking it. If you don't want to take any chances with the garment, go to the Twinn Pines website and look for "Perk" and "Boost." These two items are a bit expensive, but they are supposed to be guaranteed safe for vintage garments.) Then swish it around really good until it's pretty well dissolved. It might seem like this is too much to put in, but it really isn't.

By the way, I'm NOT an expert on this subject, but I've used it so many times with a lot of success. But, I want you to know that I got an email from a fellow Ebayer who let me know she had used it on a vintage garment and thought it might have caused it to disintegrate. She didn't say how exactly she washed the garment, but did note that she did use Oxyclean and wondered if she used too much and if that were the cause of the garment's disintegration. I just wanted to let you know that there is that possibility. That's why I'd use an extremely weak concentration of the solution and see how it goes, then gradually increase the amount of the Oxyclean to the water if the garment needs more cleaning if you think it's safe to do so.
 
(5) Add the garment or garments to the bowl.  If the garments are the same color, you can put them all in there together as long as they'll fit in the bowl. You want there to be enough room between the folds of the garment for the water/dish soap/Oxyclean mix to get in there into all areas of the fabric and do the "dirty work." Gently swish the garments around in the water. Remember - these are vintage fabrics
 you're working with. Some of them are more fragile than others.

(6) You'll probably end up leaving the garments in there for a few hours, depending upon how dingy they are. A key factor in how well and clean the garment comes out is the constancy of the warm-hot water temperature during soaking. You don't want the water just warm, and you don't want it hot-hot, you want it hot enough to get out the dirt, yet not too hot that it can damage the vintage fabric.
 
(7) I check the water every now and then while the garment(s) are soaking and if the water has cooled, I just run more warm- hot water in the bowl, throw in some more dish soap, and Oxyclean (some of it goes down the drain when you pour out the cold water and renew it with hot-warm water). I also check every 1/2 hour or so to see how much the garment has lightened due to dirt and age-related dinginess coming out. I also gently swish the garments around about every 1/2 hour. You'll be really surprised out how well this stuff works on the dresses without
damaging them a bit.
 
(8) When the garment is the color you think it should be, hold the garment(s) in the bowl with one hand and pour out the water with the other. I run warm-warm or warm-hot water in the bowl continuously and gently swish the garment(s) around under the running water until I don't see any more soap bubbles.
 
(9) Then I run them under cool water in the same way.
 
(10) Hold onto the garments and dump the water out of the bowl. I very gently squeeze the water out of the garments. You can also lie them flat in a towel and gently roll them up in it and gently squeeze the water out. I then hang them over the edge of the tub to dry. They don't take too long to dry - probably overnight.  Materials like taffeta and tulle dry quickly.
 
(11) If you want to iron the garments, set your iron on the lowest setting you think the garment can handle without burning, turn the garment inside out and test the iron on a tiny unseen part to see if that's the right temperature for ironing that particular fabric. I try to iron vintage doll garments inside out.

Another Ebayer said that she irons small areas of a doll garment -  like doll sleeves by putting batting inside of them. What a great idea! But, you don't want the stuffing to melt inside the dress at a certain heat level setting of the iron, so I don't know if you would use synthetic or natural fiber batting.
 
(12) Resew on your trims, sequins, flowers, pearls, etc.

Hello, Everyone, I would like to add an additional word of caution when using Oxyclean...

I was recently contacted by an Ebayer who was very concerned about what I had written in this article about using Oxyclean to clean vintage doll garments. This Ebayer has excellent "vintage doll credentials" and wanted to let me know that Oxyclean could possibly contain bleaching agents such as Hydrogen Peroxide. I carefully checked my container of Oxyclean over several times but was not able to locate this ingredient on it anywhere. (But, I have not yet spent the time researching it on the internet so do not know for sure, due to other life priorities at this time. When I have some time, I will research it and add what I find to this guide.)

 But, I would like to thank this kind Ebayer for bringing this to my attention, so I could add this information to this guide. I do not want anyone to wash a precious, fragile, vintage or antique garment using Oxyclean and not be aware of the potential for possible damage to the fabric (as well as possible color-washing of the fabric). I have used this method very successfully many times, but I am aware of "how much of this, and how much of that" works well together without causing damage to the vintage garments I clean. I would not deliberately and with fore-knowledge recommend a cleaning technique which I knew to damage vintage doll garments. My desire is to be helpful to my fellow doll collectors and preservationists in order to preserve vintage dolls and restore them to their original beauty (or as close as is safely possible).

I would strongly recommend that if the fabric is of a delicate, fragile, or antique nature, and you are uncertain about using this technique, do NOT take a chance by using Oxyclean. There is another product which has an excellent reputation among those in the doll community (and is advertised in professional doll publications) and that is "Boost" and "Perk" which are manufactured and marketed by "Twinn Pines of Maine." If you "google" it, it should take you right to their website. I believe that "Boost" is the original doll garment cleaning solution, and "Perk" is an additional garment cleaner which increases the effectiveness of "Boost" if the garment is particularly soiled and is not coming completely clean after being washed with "Boost." I do not know because I have not used these products, but I do have other Twinn Pines of Maine products and have both heard of and read of their sterling professional reputation in the doll community. I believe that "Boost" and "Perk" may be about $10 per bottle ( /-). The bottle is about the size of a slender shampoo bottle. It's been a long time since I've been to their website, so I honestly can't say for sure. 

Once again, it is my sincere desire to be of help to those who have been searching for information regarding the subjects that I have written guides about. My wish is to save others an inordinate amount of fruitless and frustrating searching (like what I had to go through in order to find this information), or having to spend large amounts of money in order to get information which could be freely shared. So, I paid for it, searched for it, studied it, practiced it and learned it, and would simply like to share with you what has worked for me. 

If you have found this guide to be helpful to you, please submit a vote for it.

If you have any questions you'd like to ask, please feel free to email me. I'm not an expert, but I just would like to share with you some things that have worked well for me, so you don't have to go on any wild goose-chases like I did (or pay lots of money!) to find the same information. :)

I'll respond as soon as I can.

Sincerely,

Sherry,

Victoria West Designs