Getting Wrinkles or Hemlines Out of Fabric

My mother has many ribbons from her beauty pageant days along with sashes made of different fabrics ranging from felt cut out letters, paint on the stiff funeral bow type ribbon to the latter fancy reunions sashes. 
 
Eventually, each one of my siblings will get one of her sashes, trophies or ribbons framed with pictures depicting the event of the item. 

I have had a difficult time getting the wrinkles out of the old stiffer ribbons as I have ironed them several times. I have also had a difficult time with the felt banner / sashes as the glue on them melts under the iron and they slide. 
 
Figuring out how to restore the ribbons and sashes has been on my mind for several years as I have been buying up the frames that are the right size for each item as well as gathering the pictures that go with each item so I can mat them in the frame with the item. 

Some items even have newspaper clippings to go with the picture and item so as I am working on them, I am taking stock as to what needs to go with what so I can get the items framed and out of my house. Truly, I need to scan them all and my sisters sent four bins to my home with my niece today so I have my work cut out for the next year. My hope is that by next Christmas I can have all of them framed and ready to give out. 

With all that, I found an article that stated that you can get hemlines / hem lines out of fabric using vinegar. I didn't want to try it on one of her sashes so I thought I would try it on one of her lesser exciting ribbons. 

As you may remember, I shared a post about using flat irons or curling irons to iron ribbons. I have done this for years and it is faster and less work than a clothes iron so I used my hair straightener to iron the ribbon but as has been the case, the deep wrinkles didn't come out. 

I wish I had thought to take a picture of the ribbon before using the straightener but as usual, I forgot until half into the project which usually is the case. 

The article I found said that you dab white vinegar onto the wrinkle in the fabric and then iron the back side of the item.I have to say I should have known better but I did it and the two spots where I used the vinegar, made darker spots. 

I show them in the video, but basically, the wrinkle at the bottom right and then the creases on the left side of the "official" wording became darker on the wrinkle line from the vinegar. 
 
I then tried just wetting the q-tip with water, squeezing any excess out and then dabbing it onto the wrinkle and using a mild heat on the straightener, the wrinkles came right out. 

There was a bit of damage to the ribbon due to the folding as the fibers had moved but it was minor compared to the vinegar staining. 

I figured it couldn't hurt to try and use water to get the vinegar out after and it actually lightened the stain some by dabbing the spot using a q-tip with water on it. 

You can see how they lightened in the bottom picture as I did that after I made the video. The ribbon is 60 years old so it does have staining from just being in bins and boxes over the years but I think it turned out fairly well from what it looked like when I started.

She has the most adorable roping pictures of her in her custom made rodeo outfit that will be adorable next to this, along with her ticket to the rodeo, and the news articles about the event. I think it will be quite a fun frame when I am finished but like I said, I still need to finish combining all the sorted boxes and finish sorting all the news articles and cut them down out of the entire paper, scan them and then distribute it all except the stuff that I will frame for my siblings but in the end, I think it will be nice to have made something beautiful or heirloom out of what other would have thrown away.        
 
Truly, I need to blog about Christmas, drill, trips, our yearly newsletter etc but the sorting thing is all consuming as I need it out of my house and garage! Hopefully I can find some balance without going nuts!