My colleague Cambray Baylis, Save the Flags Conservation Specialist, and I recently completed treatment of another one of Michigan’s treasured Civil War flags! We began working on a regimental flag carried by the 15th Michigan Infantry last summer when we traveled to Textile Preservation Associates (Ranson, WV) for further training. At that time, we were trying to determine if this flag matched a fragment of a flag that was donated to us in 2024. You can read that story here.
During this analysis process, we discovered that while there is only about a third of this flag intact, the remaining silk was in good condition, and the painted elements were stable. With TPA’s recommendation, we decided to continue the conservation treatment ourselves back in Lansing.
Seeing as this flag was sewn between layers of netting in the 1960s in an early attempt at preservation, the first step we took was to remove this netting, stitch by stich. During the 1960s netting process, the fringe had been removed and then reattached, so we also had to take the fringe off again to access the edges of the flag.
Once the net had been removed, we decided to continue with humidification, applying moisture to the flag to relax creases, lift surface dirt, and help realign the fibers of silk that had become twisted or misplaced. This is the largest piece Cambray and I have humidified so this was a challenge for us!
There are many humidification techniques for textiles. The method we used here was to moisten paper towels with distilled water, lay them across the surface of the flag and let them sit under glass weights for a few hours. In this case we repeated the humidification a second time to achieve the results we were looking for.
The final stage of treatment is encapsulation – hand sewing the flag between layers of lightweight nylon tulle. With a thin needle and a very fine polyester thread, we sewed around the outer edges of the flag, and through any holes and splits in the silk. This process holds any small loose pieces of silk in place, helps keep and damaged areas from expanding, and provides additional stability to the original fabric.
One of the last steps of encapsulation was to reattach the original fringe. The fringe of this flag is in three sections, one 39 inches long, and two that are about 14 inches long. Before we began removing the netting, the longer section of fringe was attached to the bottom edge of the flag where there was very little original silk remaining, meaning that most of that fringe was sewn onto empty netting. We do not know if this was the original placement of the fringe before the 1960s treatment, and we suspect it may have been moved at this time.
Since our goal in conservation is to simply preserve the flags, not “improve” their appearance, we usually don’t make any changes for aesthetic reasons alone. In this case, however, we decided to sew the longer length of fringe to the top edge where there is more original silk and put the two shorter lengths at the bottom. This way we avoided having an excessive amount of empty encapsulation material attached to the flag.
Altogether, we spent about 50 active hours working on this flag - hours that tested our skills and provided valuable experience to carry forward into our next projects!
-May Oyler, Save the Flags Conservation Specialist
