How and by what means can I clean a felt hat at home?

Like all items of clothing, hats often lose their attractive appearance as a result of regular wear or, on the contrary, long-term storage in a closet. Alas, felt is pretty easily soiled material, so information on how to clean a hat from felt is useful to many.

Simple ways to clean your hat

Before removing any dirt from the hat, it must be cleaned from dust. This can be done with a clothes brush or vacuum cleaner with a nozzle made of non-rigid pile.

• To clean the hat from street dust and sweat, in a ratio of about 1: 2: 2, ordinary salt, ammonia and table vinegar are mixed. The resulting mixture is thoroughly stirred and rubbed with it the contaminated parts of the hat.
• If some places on the felt hat are worn from regular wear and shine very much, then you can correct the situation by rubbing them a little with fine-grained emery paper. Instead, table salt and a clothes brush can be used.
• Another simple recipe is to dilute ammonia in water in equal proportions, moisten a rag of coarse cloth in the mixture. She should wipe the soiled places, trying not to wet the felt itself very much, because it can be deformed.

Remove raindrops

It is recommended to wet the product wet due to bad weather or during cleaning, so that it dries evenly and does not lose shape, tightly packed with newspapers and dried in a warm, dry place, but not too close to heating appliances.

To remove traces of raindrops, you need to hold the hat for a while over a container of boiling water, and then smooth the pile with a soft brush. Instead of a pan, you can use a household steamer, but do not keep its nozzle too close to the hat. An even simpler way is to brush the hat with a medium hard brush dipped in clean, cool water. The same method will return to the faded product the usual shine and gloss.

Simple salt will help to cope with traces of fat on felt

Fighting Fat

To remove a fresh greasy stain at home, it is necessary to rub it with a crust of dried rye bread. If it is not at hand, you can fill the oily drops with salt, as is done for any other tissue. If the stain has time to become old, eat into felt fabric and is no longer amenable to such simple measures, then you will have to use a more potent tool - refined gasoline. A rag or napkin is wetted in it, which gently soaks the contaminated place. It is soaked, not wetted, because otherwise the pile will remain caked in this place.

A mixture of refined gasoline with potato starch is quite effective against greasy marks. The resulting slurry is applied to the blurred areas, and after drying, shake off with a brush. If there are stains on the hat, they are removed with a rag dampened with water and citric acid or juice.

We clean hats of different colors

Dark felt products can be cleaned with a decoction of tobacco (a tablespoon of leaves per liter of water). In the resulting liquid, moisten a rag and gently wipe the stains. The only drawback of this method is the perceptible smell of tobacco from the product. To get rid of it, you will have to air the hat for several days.

Light products can be cleaned with bran. To do this, they are rubbed into the fabric, and then shaken out by tapping movements from the back of the hat.

It is easy to clear yellowness on light felt hats using a solution with the addition of 2 teaspoons of ammonia and 4 tablespoons of hydrogen peroxide per 1 liter of water. In the mixture, moisten the clothes brush and gently clean the product, being careful not to wet it much.

Tip

In no case should you use a product designed to remove stains from white felt on colored items. Most likely, such a stain remover will irreversibly damage the color of the hat in the contaminated area.

If folk remedies for some reason are not suitable, you can use a stain remover, strictly following the instructions for its use, or contact a dry cleaner.

Proper storage is the key to clean hats

So that the hat does not have to be cleaned too often, it is recommended to store it in a place protected from dust and dampness. Well, if there are no sources of strong odors nearby, because felt perfectly absorbs them. An ideal place for storage is a dense cardboard box. If the hat is removed for a long time, then it should be stuffed inside with soft paper and wrapped in cloth. Do not hang the hat for a long time so that it does not lose shape.

Tip

If some kind of pollution has gotten into a woman's hat so much that it cannot be cleaned by any of the listed methods, then this place can always be decorated with something - a flower, a bow or any other decorative element.

In general, the contamination that suddenly appeared on your favorite hat is not a reason to hide it on the far shelf in the closet and run to the store for a new one. At home, returning a clean and well-groomed look to a felt hat is not difficult at all.