A cleaning and a closer look at an amazing 1950’s hairpin lace dress hand made from silk ribbon

I recently received a large donation of many items from a generous follower from California. In it was many children's items and in addition to that his mother's wedding dress, which I will do in the future. And what I'm focusing on today in the donation is this dress. In it was also a little bag that had three spools of matching thread. It has the matching belt and I love this color. It had this tissue paper with Christian Dior on it and inside were two pairs of stockings. I'm assuming the lighter one was probably worn for her wedding and this one here matches the dress and that is the Christian Dior pair. You can just barely see the the ink that remains on the band of that stocking. So in with it was this spool of what I first thought was like a horsehair ribbon, used for hems and making hats and whatnot. And it turns out it's silk organdy ribbon. And then I realized the dress is made from that ribbon. I mean this blows my mind. I cannot believe that somebody was able to make the dress from this. I can sew but I cannot crochet. I cannot, well now anyway, knit. So I did some research and I found what I believe are the original instructions. This is a reprint PDF that I ordered from eStitches on Etsy. This is all a foreign language to me so this makes no sense to me what all these instructions are. But here you can see that spool of the silk organdy ribbon and here is what it's made on. It's a hairpin lace crochet loom. So I found an inexpensive one from eBay just because I was curious. And I like to challenge myself to try to learn new things. I'm pushing 60 so I got to keep using my brain. So I watched a YouTube video over and over and over again in slow motion and finally I was able to get the gist of it. And this is absolutely not a how to do this kind of thing. Definitely refer to a video where somebody actually knows what they're doing. But here's the gist of how this is done. So you do this kind of stitch and then just keep flipping it every round. So you do one of these stitches and then how the edges come off and then get finished with this other thread, that's a whole other thing that I don't understand. But at least I figured out that portion of it. So the dress, I just wanted to give a quick refresh. Turns out there were a few spots in the front that I didn't actually notice until after I had cleaned it. But as it's silk, I'm wanting to be very gentle with it. So I'm using the Heritage Park and it's an unscented, meant for silk and wool. And I'm using my mesh rack on the bottom. And I'm doing cool water because I don't want it to shrink. And I'm doing a brief soak and I'm just kind of doing here an up and down motion with the rack that kind of gives it a kind of a gentle cleaning motion. You can see a little bit of color loss in the water, which is partly why I wanted to keep the soak brief because I didn't know how color fast this was going to be. And then I let it go on that mesh rack until it was no longer dripping and let it towel roll. And when it was just barely damp, I put it on mannequin to finish drying, which I don't normally do with something that has a little bit of give, but I didn't want any shrinking. I wanted to make sure that it stayed out to its normal size. So it also came with a matching satin underdress slip and that I believe is a combination of rayon and acetate. So I gave that a wash as well. And then, so of course it gets pretty wrinkled, so I just misted it with water and I'm doing this on the wrong side and just pressing it little by little. And then I did, the seams weren't finished, so on the ones that I could, I did take a pinking shears and tried to finish that. The side seam did not have a closure, so I added snaps to finish that as well. So the belt did not have a buckle, so I took a vintage plastic one from my stash and I thought, why not use that silk ribbon to make it so that it's matching? So I kind of, it got a little better as I went on and I wish I would have done a longer piece of the double ribbon because I had to do this about three different times. But I just kind of did sort of a buttonhole stitch around the whole thing and then I just put that through and then stitched that in place. And I'm really happy with how it turned out. It just makes it so that it blends in really well with the dress and so I'm happy with that. And then I decided to give those stockings a little bath and I'm including the pair that matches along with the dress in the listing. And again, I'm using the Heritage Park and just giving it a cold water quick wash and then I put in the other pair, which I will eventually include with the wedding dress when I get to that. And then I'm using gloves because I didn't want my rough hands to catch on this very delicate, just light as a feather fabric, which I'm not sure if it's nylon or silk. But here I took it outside so you can see the delicate nature of this. It's considered lace. It's considered a hairpin lace and I realized it's considered hairpin because the loom that it's made on is shaped like a hairpin. So this to me is just an amazing find. I again am stunned with the amount of work that somebody put in to making this. The donor didn't think that it was his mother that made this, so it's unsure who it was that did this incredible labor of love. And I think this is an heirloom worthy gown for somebody and completely classic. I mean, totally wearable today and beautiful 70 years later.