Thread: How do I revive Isis wings?

My old and very well loved pair of gold lame Isis wings are looking very tired. They're actually probably only good for practice now, but I haven't got time to get a new pair in (in fact my sister is buying me a pair for xmas, but that's a whole other story). Because the pleats are almost completely dropped out & they are badly creased (excessive use rather than mismanagement) they aren't drawing like they should so they are hard to manage. Which brings me to my question.

How do I iron gold lame pleats back in without ruining the fabric? Please bear in mind that I do not iron if I can possibly avoid it, so I will need a very detailed instruction on how to not ruin the prop I intend to perform with in 2 weeks.

Would misting them and carefully folding them back into place (like as in when you store them) help?

I'm wondering if you could coax the pleats back into shape by folding the wings up and then pressing them with a low heat steam iron?

I'd probably break out the ironing board and a ruler, and have a bash at resetting the pleats one by one, but that does sound like an awful lot of work.

No one around who could loan you a set?

I'm going to give them a rinse & let them drip dry in the shower. Hopefully the pleats will remain but the creases will drop out. Hopefully. If not, oh well, I'll just live with it.

And here's how I did it.

How to revive your Isis wings:

Remove sticks
Hang up in shower
Rinse with hot water for 10 minutes
Allow to drip dry*

This seems to reset the pleats on chemically-pleated wings.


*Please note that while the wings will be dry within a few hours, the neck elastic takes forever to dry. 9 hours later & it's still damp at the neck. However, the wings are behaving beautifully again.

I'm glad it helped!
Thanks for sharing!

I added a link to this thread from the http://www.bellydanceforums.net/danc...nce-props.html-thread.

Are they lame? Or organza?

Lame.

I got organza ones, such a different material. I'm glad mine are in top condition even though they had to survive being a on a chair in an airplane once LOL. I wouldn't know if this trick would work on organza.

The wings my sis has on order for me are organza so when they need reviving I'll play with the technique & let you know. But theoretically drip drying should work - just adjust the temp of the water to suit the fabric.