Remove a water stain on fabric

I had a large window curtain satisfactorily dry cleaned. It's made of coarse, heavy cotton.

Later, I tried to clean a small stain on it with cold water and mild hand soap. That stain was gone, but replaced by a much larger stain of the wetted area. Plain soap and water doesn't stain cotton, I thought, so I tried again with barely tepid water and a very little washing-up liquid. That has always worked well elsewhere, but here it just enlarged the stain to the new, bigger wetted area. It seems that the soap and water has reacted with the residue of the dry cleaning solvent.

Anyone know how to remove this stain short of sending it back to the dry cleaner?

Reply to
Joe
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Nothing to do with the dry cleaning. Adding water to your new stain is just allowing it and the soap to migrate through the wetted area. Dry clean it again unless you can wash it properly and rinse the stain away.

Reply to
Bob Minchin

Out of interest, why did you get it dry-cleaned in the first place rather than washed in a machine at home? Cotton washes perfectly ok in a machine. Were there instructions on it only to dry-clean?

Assuming no such limitations, bung it into the washing machine on a rinse cycle, spin it to get most of the water out, then hang it up somewhere to dry and get the creases to drop out.

Reply to
Chris Hogg

Tried washing some old 'dry-clean only' Denim curtains and they shrunk, significantly. Particularly noticeable because the synthetic (blackout) lining didn't :) :)

Reply to
Lee

Denim, really . . . :-?

Could have just left the longer blackouts as a mullet I suppose :-)

Not draylon?

Reply to
fred

Hehe, they were my choice and are not as bad as they sound, they don't have orange stitching or anything! They are heavy though :) SWMBO replaced them with lightweight synthetic ones with thermal linings when we re-decorated. Probably look nicer tbf :)

Reply to
Lee

I also dont know why one would dry clean such. Run it through the machine a t 40 and the staining should all wash out. The failure rate from doing this is very small, I'd only stick to dry cleaning if its known to be water sol uble dye. Dry cleaning companies wet clean a lot of the stuff they get sent to dry clean.

NT

Reply to
meow2222

It's a large, heavy, lined curtain.

I think it would but, even if I could find a machine big enough, I don't want the shrinkage.

It wasn't until I had this problem that I learned that "dry cleaning" isn't dry at all.

Reply to
Joe

Too big for a laundry's machine?

I reckon that's already happened. When velvet comes out of a washing machine its all crumpled, after a few days hanging though its all good again.

'perc,' though paraffin, white spirit & trichloroethane have been used too.

NT

Reply to
meow2222

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