AKICIF: How do you wash a sari?

[lydy]

I have a beautiful silk sari in midnight blue and teal with extremely elaborate silver embroidery that I adore. It looks beautiful, and it makes me look beautiful. I've had it for five years or so, and while I don't wear it often, I know that skin oils can damage fabric such as silk. At what point should I start to worry about washing it.

When that time comes, just exactly how does one wash 8 metres silk heavy with embroidery? And have it be smooth and ironed at the end of the process? I talked to a dry cleaner once, and he was unable to estimate, but said it could be more than $100. I'm thinking, no, not a chance.

I should really ask one of the sari shops that are starting to spring up on Central (Minneapolis has sari shops!), but I'm feeling lazy and also curious. Anybody know how this is done, even if it is feat to be performed by professionals only?

Comments

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I've never washed a sari, but I often hand-wash silk by leaving it to soak in cold water with bodyshop bubblebath for about an hour, and then rinsing it in more cold water, and then -- this is the bit that's counterintuitive but useful -- hang it on the line soaking wet without wringing at all. If you do this, the silk will dry flat and as if ironed, and obviate any need for any ironing at all. Ironing silk is a bad idea, apart from the likelihood of scorching or melting, heavy silk can actually set on fire. Well, so I've been told. It was in another country, and before any of us were born that my Auntie Floss started a fire in the scullery while ironing her silk stockings. (It was before the War, so probably in the 1930s.) I've never dared risk it myself. But the hang wet thing really works.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

I'm trying to figure out how to hang 8 metres of silk on a clothes line. Even if we had one, which we don't and I kinda wish we did, the chances of it being fully 8 metres is kinda unlikely.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

You do it in loops. It helps if you're upstairs, too. I could quite easily hang eight metres of silk in loops on my perhaps five metre long clothes line.

I have seen a sari hung like that -- from a train window while passing through Birmingham.

You know, though, maybe you could just sponge whatever might need cleaning and not worry too much about it.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

It's actually not soiled, except so much as wearing it causes it to come in contact with skin. I guess I'll not do anything until I spill something on it or something.