Satin Stitches Tips for Taking Care of Your Dance Costumes!

Satin Stitches | Feb 12, 2008 | 0

Satin Stitches Explains it ALL!

OK, you have your frilly, fabulous costumes.  They look great, they perform well.  But, your costume smells bad, and you have managed to spill some lunch on it! Now what?

Should you throw it in the washing machine?  Soak it in the sink?  Probably not!  But what should you do?  You have spent lots of money on your costume, you do not want to ruin it by the wrong method of laundering.

I have written many articles on costume care.  Most of them are posted on my Costume Care Page on www.satinstitches.com.

You might wonder why I concern myself with a seemingly mundane household chore, when my profession is costume design?

Well, out of necessity and a sense of duty.  My first foray into costume care was over twenty years ago.

After several years of manufacturing dance team costumes with a substantial amount of sequins on them, I received a call from a high school athletic director.  He wanted my company to take responsibility for the loss of color on the sequins of their Satin Stitches costumes, after the costumes were laundered.  I asked how they had been laundered.  I was told that they were sent to the dry-cleaning company that serviced their schools football uniforms.  Yikes!  I was horrified that ANYONE would have thought that the same quality of laundering would work for down-in-the-dirt football uniforms and glitzy, spangled dance costumes!  But to cover my companys butt, I started my first research on the proper care of sequins!

I found out all about different types of dry-cleaning fluids and that how heat can affect the possible melting of sequins.  I learned that all dry-cleaners are not equal.  I have learned that most dry-cleaners will not take on the responsibility of correctly laundering sequined dance costumes, and most will not be successful at all.  Generally, your best option is to work with a non-chain, family owned business.  They usually have years of hands-on experience with many different challenges with difficult to clean garments.

Unfortunately, for the athletic director from the story above, their dry-cleaner had no idea what fluid to use and what heat setting to use for sequined dance costumes.  I however, had found that family-owned dry-cleaning establishment that knew what they were doing with sequined dance costumes.  The manager had cleaned her daughters dance costumes for years!  She provide a written statement for me, and the dry-cleaner, not Satin Stitches was on the hook to replace the ruined sequins.

That was my initiation into costume care issues!  Moving forward, it became my mission to help my clients to protect their costumes from all sorts of bad cleaning issues.

My most important tip?  Competition dance costumes are NOT your everyday clothes! You CANNOT treat them this way!  They are generally made out of specialty fabrics that DO NOT LAUNDER WELL.  Also, understand what is acceptable with upkeep, as seen from the perspective of your audience.  If there are visible stains or noticeable odor from this distance, the something must be done.  If not, you do not need to worry about it.  In todays society, clothes are generally washed too often.  You can wear out your clothes by washing or dry-cleaning them too often.    Over cleaning is much more detrimental to costumes than to regular clothes.

Many of the most showy fabrics will not dry-clean, as the surface-printed holographic or foil effects will be stripped away.  Excessive hand washing can also ruin the integrity and showiness of these fabrics.  And if your rhinestones are not glued on permanently, do not try to launder them!  Some times the proper action is NO ACTION!

Always check with your costume manufacturer for their suggestions for laundering your costumes.  At Satin Stitches, we ALWAYS provide a care swatch.  This is made of all the fabrics and trims used on your costume, sewn together so you can test your laundering techniques.  If you have an entire line of costumes to launder, after you have tested your care swatch, try one costume.  Then work on all your groups costumes, only after you are successful with one.

Here is a HUGE tip.  NEVER soak a costume.  Gently and quickly hand wash any costume that is listed as hand washable. Spot clean WHENEVER POSSIBLE.  Only subject the stained area to your laundering attempts.  Follow this adage-if it is not dirty, do not wash it.  If your costume stinks, use Fresh Again on it, you do not have to launder costumes because they smell bad.

I have many costume laundering articles on my www.satinstitches.com Costume Care Page, including our recommended use of Fresh Again, an odor-eliminating product.  A fab new product to protect against perspiration stains, is Hollywood Fashion Tapes BEHIND THE SEAMS.  We have information on this product on our website, and we are offering quantity discounts for dance teams on this product.  And do not miss my article GIRLS SO SWEAT!  Shocking yes, but we girls do perspire, so check on this article with tips on what to do about it!

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Teacher, Enthusiast, Parent, Studio, Costume Care, Costume Design, Costumes (all tags)