W.I.P \A guide to ball jointed dolls/ Not all content is written by me (I also reblog). Note: I am currently inactive in the hobby, but I will answer questions to the best of my knowledge.
I have seen this discussion come up quite a few times and so decided to make a visually aided tutorial on washing doll clothes!
You can throw doll clothes into the wash with your own stuff, but I’m afraid of losing things or that the machine will be too rough. Commonly, doll clothes are cotton, cotton blends, polyester, or polyester blends. There’s little way of knowing what you’re working with since most doll clothiers don’t specify materials or have little tags on the inside that will tell you. Generally, if it feels like something you own and wash, you can wash it. DO NOT THROW ANY DOLL CLOTHES IN THE DRYER. This is where things skrink, materials will melt or warp, things will rip and if anything can go wrong, it will in a tumble dryer.
Materials you need for washing!
A. Clothes! Separate your clothes into loads based on color. Blacks, blues, and reds are the most common dye colors to run. Whites love to discolor.
B. Some kind of container or basin to do the main washing in. You can use your laundry room sink itself if you have one and it’s clean.
C. Detergent. What you use should be fine as long as you aren’t trying to wash some bizarre fabric. You can also use dish soap (like Dawn).
D. Bleach. Always exercise caution when using bleach! Only bleach cottons or cotton blends with a high amount of cotton. If it feels like a tee shirt of your own that you could bleach, it should be fine. Example: I don’t recommend bleaching your White Doll Heart Fer’s coat as the lining is some kind of polyester which can get “eaten” by the bleach. The dress from a fer would be okay, since they are a cotton blend that has a high percentage of the natural cotton.
E. Hydrogen peroxide. A great alternative to bleach that is less corrosive. Unlike bleach, it can remove discolorations like blood or dirt without affecting colored fabrics.
F. A towel for drying.
Use a little bit of detergent. Add water.
How much water do you need? Enough to cover the garment(s) when submerged. Hot or cold water? Depends on the fabric. Knits can shrink when you use hot water. Colors will bleed more with hot water. If you aren’t trying to remove a lot of dirt, just use luke-warm water. Agitate. Just shake the garment(s) in the soapy water! It’s kind of like aggressively petting a dogs head. Flip the garment and agitate again.
Drain the water. NOTE: This water looks absolutely disgusting. There’s a few reasons for this.One is that this fer is over 8 years old and has never been washed in my owning it (about 8 years). Two, this fer was worn by my doll who had been exposed to people smoking in the house, in the same room at times (yeah, smoker art students who dgaf). Third, there was run-off dye. I can tell there was dye run-off because of the smell. (I have experience dying things using many different kinds of dyes and so can recognize dye stink.) NOTE: Because of the color of the water I dumped, I actually washed this garment twice. Even after the second wash, the water still ran this lovely brownish/grey color, another hint that the dye was bleeding. I also noticed on the Doll Heart tag, the red logo was bleeding a little bit, too. So beware of Doll Heart clothes getting wet! (always exercise caution getting your doll and it’s clothes wet). I was also using hot water, which really exacerbated any bleeding. These clothes had never been washed and they were musty and probably on the grosser side of things having been in a smoking household, and traveled via freight moving internationally (which is probably where the musty smell came from).
Rinse! With cold water. Make sure there feels (not slippery) and looks (no suds) like there is no more detergent left in the garments!
Wring out excess water as best as you can.
Lay flat to dry on a towel. Try to keep things straight and as un-wrinkled as possible. For full skirts or dresses, flay out the skirt as much as you can. For long-sleeved tops, spread the sleeves out so they lay naturally flat at the seams.
BLEACHING: Use a small amount of bleach and add it to water, then add in the garment. Lightly agitate to incorporate the bleach into the water and garment. Let soak. Don’t leave it in there over night, though! Only 20 minutes to an hour will be fine. I then wash the garment with detergent as usual because otherwise it smells bleach-y. For hydrogen peroxide, still add a little bit to water. You can soak for longer (even over night), and you don’t have to re-wash with detergent to get any smell out as HP doesn’t have any real smell.
