My dear sweetie went to China without me. But he brought back two lengths of truly gorgeous brocade.
However, he said that one shopkeeper said something on the way out about needing to "cure" the brocade in cold water. Can anyone offer me any insight, here?
I like Kate's suggestion of asking Dharma Trading. I was also thinking that perhaps he meant you will need to either preshrink the silk OR use something to set the color. HMMM -- interesting -- please let us know what you find out, OK??
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Certain silks can be hand-washed or even by machine on the gentle cycle, thus pre-washing the fabric before running up your project would remove sizing, allow for shrinkage, and remove excess dyes; however IIRC silk brocade normally is dry clean only.
I recall that my mother always used common cooking salt in water to set dye in fabric likely to bleed colour. I use a lot of silk fabric and always wash it before sewing to preshrink it but have never bothered about the salt. I just wash it and if colour comes out, I keep rinsing till the rinse water is clear. I wash all fabric before sewing even those that say dry clean only.
I haven't heard back from Thai Silks or Dharma Trading. But...
I ran into Brenda Clough, who is a fine science fiction and fantasy writer and knows her fabrics and is Chinese American. And she suggested that I either just leave it to my dressmaker (this stuff is so nice that I'm not sure I trust my own sewing skills) or cut out a piece and try washing it myself. As it happened, one of the pieces, a green and blue with fuschia medallions, didn't change much at all, but the other, a red and gold with a floral weave, is clearly heavily treated with some kind of size, and will need careful handling.
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