I am being asked more and more frequently about repairing or strengthening shawls.
Oh, how I wish I had taken classes textile conservation and preservation already. But, I haven’t.
Before proceeding, I want to say I do not encourage the wear of original shawls.
What causes damage to a shawl
- Folding creases the thread and causes fractures.
- Dryness can dry out the fibers and make them brittle.
- Moisture can invite mildew or mold.
- Moths can eat holes.
- Time is just time as it wears away the life of fiber.
- Chemicals/dyes can cause some threads/fibers to be less stable than others. These can deteriorate quicker.
Reading up on the options
- Conservation of Historic Clothing at the Museum of Textiles.
- “Fabrics use for stabilization” (also read this Terms sheet.)
-
“Reinforcing Fragile Textiles” from Methods of Conserving Archaeological Material from Underwater Sites by Donny L. Hamilton from Texas A&M University
Further reading
- “Preservation begins at home: How to care for your textile collections” by Julia M. Brennan. (This is one of the nicer, easy to follow articles for at home.)***
- Caring for Textiles blog.
- The Museum Textiles “Issuu” page.
- “A Conservator’s Approach to Viewing Textiles”, Textile Society of America, Proceedings of the Seventh Biennial Symposium, Sante Fe, NM, 2000.
- Preserving Textiles: A Guide for the Nonspecialist, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, Indiana: 1999, 92pp.
- “Treating Mrs. Robertson’s 1802 Dress”, Costume Society of America, Dress, Earleville, Md, 1993-4, pp. 65-73.
- “Fabric Wallcoverings: Historic Use, Cleaning and Conservation”, Historic Preservation, The Interiors Handbook for Historic Buildings, Vol. II, Washington, DC, 1993, pp. 5. 21-24.
For in-depth information on shawls and their history, read Paisley, Plaid, & Purled: Shawls of the Mid-Nineteenth Century
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