Iron your veil

By the time you get your veil from me, it has, depending on the technique used to make it, been dipped repeatedly in a near-boiling dye bath and/or steamed in a pot for an hour or more, washed, air dried, and then IRONED. With a very hot iron and lots of steam.

Somehow, everyone has gotten the idea that silk is a delicate fabric. It really isn’t. And to look good in a performance setting, a veil has to be free of wrinkles and fold lines. Part of me cries when I see a beautiful dancer in a beautiful costume holding a wrinkled veil. Or it’s one of my veils, and I recognize my own fold lines from the shipping.

So if your veil looks like this:

iron the heck out of it!

Silk wrinkles tend to be quite tenacious, so the best thing to do is spritz down each section  liberally with a spray bottle of water before ironing. I use my iron’s hottest setting, and have never scorched a piece of silk. And believe me, I have ironed a few hundred meters of silk.

Your veil will stay more-or-less wrinkle free if you fold it lengthwise a couple of times and then hang it on a padded clothes hanger. If you can’t hang it, folding is better than wadding it up. If you wad it up, that’s okay too, just iron it before you perform. If you have just a few soft wrinkles, hanging for an hour or so, or a few minutes in a steamy bathroom may freshen it up. If you need to control static, a fine mist of water may help, or dragging the veil across a metal clothes hanger. Avoid, or be very careful with, Static Guard. Use it in small amounts and hold the can several feet away. It can stain the fabric if you use too much or spray it to close to the veil or spray from a clogged up nozzle. Also, I’ve had bad experiences using dryer sheets – they have also stained silk with a waxy coating that would not wash out.

The best static control is handling. When you dance with a veil and handle it, small amounts of skin oils get on it that soften it up, make it even more buttery, and help keep the static down.