Remove Ink from Fabric
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I recently bought a beautiful Gymboree Easter dress from a line they put out several years ago – Garden Party. I got it on eBay for close to nothing. I think the seller had not listed the product line name or something. I was thrilled, since it was one of the dresses I had wanted my daughter to have for a long time.
Garden Party fabric
She wore it the day after her birthday, when we went to Disney’s Hollywood Studios and Epcot. We had been to the Pirate & Princess party the night before and this was a follow-up leisure day on some free Park Hopper passes we got from a friend who works in the park system.
Anyway, close to the end of the day I noticed that Gigi had been carrying her little autograph book that she had made herself close to her chest, school-girl style. The ballpoint ink pen she had been using was in the spiral spine of the book and it had been open all along! Her dress was absolutely covered with with bright blue ballpoint ink marks. Covered.
My initial response was to soak the spots in Tide for day or so and wash the dress. That did not even fade the marks! Finally, I sat down with a Q-Tip and some rubbing alcohol and just gently rubbed at each mark. I noticed the marks were slowly fading, so I soaked the dress in cold water over night and then let the dress dry. I repeated the process three times and finally I had a dress completely free of pen marks!
It was a timely process, but it saved the dress. Ideally, you would put an old towel behind the fabric you are dabbing, so the ink will bleed onto the towel. The dress I was working on, though, was lined with a satin, so the towel was superfluous.
about cotton fabric….i wan;t to know???
This dress was cotton, yes. The bow was nylon grosgrain and the ink came out of it with the alcohol on the first try. It was the cotton that was more stubborn.