Anyway, I've been making some minor progress on cleaning up the ants as mentioned in the last post. My great grandmother's wedding outfit was hit the worst, and so far I've only been able to work on the skirt. The best way I've found to be able to actually get them off has been brushing the pieces with a clean paintbrush, and despite being extremely tedious, it actually is working pretty well, and I got the skirt almost ant free in about an hour and a half yesterday. Unfortunately, another storm has moved in, and the wind and rain mean it has to hang in the laundry room until the weather clears.
The jacket and the top will be harder; there are more nooks and crannies for the ants to hide in. The sleeves seem to be where they are hiding in the top. The jacket is what's going to take the most. It's almost all stitched down ruching with lace capelet attached to the yoke, which is perfect for them to hide.
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| I took these poorly lit pictures in 2009-ish, when I first received the outfit. |
There are some severe holes in the skirt and some pretty bad staining in the jacket, but it's mainly in the sleeve lining, and you can't see it from the outside. I'll be able to better assess what actually is going on when I get in there and start cleaning.
There were easily a hundred thousand ants in that box, and I'm very fortunate that the damage that was done was all that there was.
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