Restoring vintage items can be a labor of love, but sometimes from my recent experiences, not all things need or must be restored. I was inspired to write this post to share this one bad experience, that I have had. Special thanks to KewtKitsch and OldSoulVintage for encouraging me too. They both had discussed with me about their thoughts on restorations. So my hope is that this post will give you some 'food for thought' when deciding whether or not you need to restore something that is vintage...
Now, if you are thinking about restoring anything, first decide whether this is for yourself? 2nd is it to be resold or 3rd is it for a customer? Because if you are restoring something for yourself, than if there is a mistake, it is okay and it is not something that will hurt another person. If you are restoring something to be resold, please make sure you are honest and share that in the description of your item, because it is only fair to the buyer that will be purchasing the item. Now if it is the latter, than extreme precaution should be taken to make the customer understand fully what you will be doing and how you will go about doing this to restore their vintage item.
The photo above, is an adorable sleepy kitty I was given the opportunity to trade for from a dear friend, post here. She was honest with me in that the kitty had issues like plastic degradation on the face, and the body needed cleaning and some patches were needing to be resewn along with some fur loss. So since she was to be mine, I took into consideration, what I was up against and how I was going to get her looking decent again. I tried washing her first. I removed the sponge stuffing inside her and after being washed, much of her original fur came off from age. Ugh. Even with handwashing, the fur can be so delicate, it still slowly came off. So, I tried making her a new body, post here.
Which was nice, but she was not how I expected her to be in pink. So I decided after a month to put her original body back on her. It was difficult because her original fur was still coming off, and even as I began to sew the parts back together. Why was it still falling apart? Well sadly, the orange sponge that these types of plushies have are basically were like the glue that held most of the fur in place. I also had a hard time putting her ears back into the proper placement and I had her arms sewn too low on the body. I think I had resewn her like 3 time by now! Darn it! In the end, this is the way she turned out in photo above. I felt gutted, angry at myself for even trying and even more upset for making it worse in my eyes. Sleepy kitty's face was repainted and fine, but her body was as if she had been starved to death, even with added cotton stuffing. UGH!!!
A LESSON LEARNED. Period. Sometimes not all restoration are good ones no matter how hard you may try to fix the issues. Take it from me, sometimes it is okay for a plush to look vintage, because it is.
I also wanted to add, that I've been saddened by some 'so-called' restorations that are happening in numbers by collectors as of late, mostly because they want to think of themselves as being experts or perhaps just to make a video. It takes research, experience, and understanding of what you are dealing with to even begin to try to restore something. Even a seasoned collector like myself, is still learning.
Friends, when making a video and calling it a restoration when it really isn't one can be damaging to those who may watch it and get the wrong impression. Especially if you are going to share with others that you are using any kind of soap. People will get the sense that any kind of soap is okay to use, not realizing that soaps with perfumes may damage the plush or vintage rubber further. Also, sometimes not all original stuffing is bad. Some are still perfectly good, and tossing them out isn't restoring, but rather being wasteful. These are things that I've learned the past few years myself. Another example is that there are seams on the back side of a plush, and you could use a seam ripper to open the fur up without having to use a scissors to cut a new hole. These are just some things to note.
Well, thank you for reading. I hope that sharing my learning experience with even a rare plush may teach you something. I'd rather you know about it now, than to ruin your vintage plush in the future...
Thank you for listening! ~ ggsdolls
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