recently came across a collection of some very stained garments. some were horribly littered with brown stains and after soaking in biz for a few days, you can't tell that they were stained to begin with. i treated a cotton sailor dress { which was never washed before } in a similar manner, in hopes of lightening a deep shoulder stain /discoloration. the dress ran with blue dye, but didn't stain the garment. the stain didn't lighten at all and i can't quite figure out what caused the stain. any help would be much appreciated!
Maybe it's just the photos, but that looks like sunlight bleaching to me rather than a stain. As in that sleeve edge was exposed to light in the same place for quite some time whilst the rest of the dress was not. Or does it feel like there is something in the fabric? In which case I'm wrong!
I thought it might be sun bleaching but I was hoping it wasn't. It seems there isn't any fix for that. Would anyone advise bleaching the whole garment as to even out the tone of the dress?
You can't fix sun fade. You could try dyeing the whole dress a much darker colour but you'd probably have to go black to even out the unevenness. Bleaching the whole garment is something that I've never tried but would likely return more unevenness and could weaken the fibres. Cotton is strong though. I would probably leave as is, but if you considered it a dead loss it's worth risking one of the possible solutions.
The only successful treatment for sun face I've found is to reverse the faded garment panels where possible, as it usually hasn't got through to the other side. It's a lot of work though and generally only feasible for the end user.
Yes, typical sun fading pattern - it most often happens there, probably hung on a rack somewhere, the rest of the dress was protected from other items hanging next to it. I've had several vintage items with that kind of fade - I just wear them as they are.
