Alison Saves The Wedding, part 1

At some point I owned this set:

(Image thanks to dollightful dolls' scans of the MAC catalogues)

 

Okay, I never owned the table, chair, cake, or place settings (it was $64 in 1997 dollars, and my parents weren't interested in figuring out where my 18" doll furniture would go when it's put away), but I had that dress (with full slip, shoes, and flower crown) and the veil and bouquet.

These days, I have the dress, and one shoe. To be fair, it was one of the first sets that I got for Alison. All of the Magic Attic girls had a full length princess dress, and I think my sister got Heather's at the same time. They made for some fun stories.

After a while, as I grew up, I started storing my Alison things in a cardboard box without a lid. This worked out really well, for the most part.

The only problem was that, between the years of 2004 and 2014, I had an adorable cat named Maggie. Having Maggie was not a problem itself, but Maggie was very special. Maggie spent two years refusing to walk on the floor, and instead jumping between pieces of furniture. We had to start putting her food on the bathroom counter, or else she wouldn't eat. She would express her desire to go into a room by reaching directly for the door knob, like she understood its purpose and just wasn't tall enough to touch it. She spent a good chunk of time sitting in the shower, staring at the wall. My dad swears he saw her teleport several inches one time. And, if the shower door was closed for some reason, she peed on piles of fabric.
Maggie had a stroke and had to be put to sleep just after Christmas of 2014. She was a good cat, and I frequently remind Smudge (the new cat) that she's not as good as Maggie, not yet.

However, this all resulted in me wanting to dress Alison up in her nice dress and finding this on it:

Thanks, Maggie. Glad to know you're still with us in some form.

I definitely had concerns about trying to clean a 10-year-old, irreplaceable dress, especially this one. One of the very annoying things about dresses with overlays is that the overlay can shrink more than the dress, and become too short. The little hearts are flocked onto the overlay, and I was concerned that they could rub off. There's a silk flower that's glued on, and I don't know what kind of glue it is, or how it could react to water, or how it reacted to time. Finally, the under dress is taffeta of unknown fiber, but might be acetate or not be colorfast. If it's not colorfast, it could bleed blue into the ribbon, or the ribbon could bleed pink onto the dress.

But the pee's got to come out, one way or another.

Enter Oxi-Clean. Not only was it Billy May's favorite cleaner, but it's also the cleaner for the job. For those of you who don't know how Oxi-Clean works, here's a quick summary:

• Oxi-Clean is a powder that, when mixed with water, creates a chemical reaction that makes a gentle peroxide.
• Peroxide binds to organic things, like dirt and sweat and urine. Peroxide does not bind to synthetic things, like dye or glue. 
• This is very good for cleaning Alison's bridesmaid dress, because it means the only dye or glue damage will be caused by the water. 
• The fact that Oxi-Clean will keep producing peroxide for six hours means the peroxide won't be used up in the first few minutes of soaking, like it would if you just put H2O2 on the stain. The fact that it only produces it for six hours means there is NO benefit to soaking it overnight.
• Since the peroxide binds with water in addition to binding with organic soils, when you wash the Oxi-Clean out, it takes the dirt and piss away with it. 

That's pretty simplified, but I wanted to explain it somewhat. Science is cool, folks.

 So, the process was simple: Oxi-Clean soak for as long as necessary to remove the visible urine. Wash in cold water with cold water detergent (like Woolite, but I use the Amway brand because my mom's hella into Amway and gifts it to me a lot). Rinse it out as well as possible.

I didn't take pictures, but that's the process.

Since the dress is so small, I got to do my favorite test to make sure all the soap's out. I filled my baby-sized wash tub up with cold water, and put the rinsed-out dress in it for a minute or so. If a lot of soap comes out, I need to rinse it again. If a tiny bit of soap comes out, I need to swirl the water around to get it out, and then be confident that diluting it in 1 gal of water only leaves a negligible amount in. This method isn't really possible with a garment that's human-sized due to the water necessary, but when it's just a gallon it works out nicely.
It's important to get all the soap out. Soap binds to dirt, which is why we use it. If there's soap left in the dress, it'll bind dirt to the dress.

(Lazy final picture taken from my bed, because I didn't want to move)

I dried it flat on a towel until it was just damp, and then put it on a hanger and carefully pulled the overlay down so it'd dry without shrinking and leaving the under dress exposed. I let it dry hanging. The taffeta really didn't want to hold onto water, and that made it dry really quickly.

The overlay didn't shrink, and the fabric flower's still attached just fine. The Oxi-Clean didn't soak long enough to get the flocking in the overlay back to white, but I would rather have it gray than hurt the overall dress.
The satin ribbon on the sash has faded quite a bit, but that's mostly from time, and not from being soaked. It's almost white in some places.
Something about the process has made the hole in the overlay in the back much less visible. I'd guess the process of pulling straight has made it close. Either way, it'll let me close it up without patching it, which I thought I'd have to do before it closed up. It's good news.

Anyhoozie, the dress is pretty much fixed up. I've decided I'm going to make the missing pieces, and maybe do that for all of her outfits. I'm not going on Ebay for a while, since I recently fell victim to Double Ebay Disease and that looks like it's going to cost me $250. Because of this, and because I'm both crafty and getting 20% off everything I buy at the craft superstore, I'm going to be making as much of it as I can. It doesn't really matter to me as much if it's original or not. I just want the whole set to make up for losing it as a kid.

Again, I really don't feel bad about losing all the pieces. The stories my sister and I told about the dolls adventures and all the crazy costume changing shit they did, and the fact that we had fun playing with them makes me happy.

So, to do list: slip/petticoat for the dress, flower crown, new shoes, maybe the veil and bouquet. Maybe.

It's 12:17am. Good night, everyone.