The Laundress: Wax Stain Removal Demo

With the holidays upon us, I’m sure most of you have broken out those wonderfully holiday scented candles—we know we have. The problem with candles is the messy wax; I’m sure you all can relate. People have asked us how to get wax off clothing before, so we thought we would blog about it for a step-by-step how-to...
We took a 100% Cashmere sweater with wax stains and made it look like brand new...

  We first used the J. Crew Sweater Comb to scrape off the big wax blobs to leave only the bit of wax saturated in the yarns. You could also use a butter knife.

Then you’ll want to always use a flat surface when treating stains, especially for this wax stain. Gwen then used a heavy stock paper and placed it directly underneath the sweater where the wax deposit was located. We used a thick card stock; regular computer paper wouldn’t be thick enough.
Gwen then took a lightweight simple cotton fabric—you can see in this picture that the thread count is very low.
She then made a slight cut with scissors into the fabric, and ripped the fabric so that she had smaller pieces to work with. Not sure why it was important to work with smaller pieces? You want to have a clean cloth and cardstock for each wax spot so that you don’t redeposit any wax back on to the sweater.

You’ll then place the cloth on top of the wax stain. So it’s like a “sweater sandwich.” On top you will have the cloth, then the sweater with the stain touching the cloth, and the durable paper underneath the sweater—all on top of the flat surface. Don’t forget with each new stain you want a clean cloth and cardstock so that no wax is deposited back on to the sweater.

You will need a little bit of heat to remove the wax, but remember we are working with cashmere, so you’ll want to use a low heat setting on your iron. Here we used the “Wool-Silk” setting for best results.
Gwen then lightly placed the iron on top of the cloth and moved it around in a circular motion. After pulling the cloth away, the wax was gone. However, if you pull the cloth away and some wax is still there, you’ll need to use a clean space on the cloth, or a new cloth piece altogether, and repeat with the iron.
See! We told you, like brand new! We repeated the steps above with each wax stain. You'll be amazed how easy it can be. We then followed The Laundress Wool & Cashmere Recipe, and it was as if there was never wax on the sweater at all!