[nhoratiu]

Hello,
My wife recently obtained a folk traditional shirt (pictured below) and upon inspection, she learned that the previous owner had washed the shirt before sending it to us in hope of eliminating age spots. This resulted in indigo dye transfering to the rest of the shirt, which now looks blue-ish.

https://ibb.co/gbd5nx

Currently, we are trying to remove the transfered dye while preserving the rest of it as much as possible. It would be great if we could bring the shirt back to white. It was suggested to us to speak to someone who is knowledgeable of the chemistry involved, so here we are asking for your help.

As a side note, the shirt's cloth was hand-woven on a loom, using thick cotton and hemp threads.

Is there any way of getting rid of the blue tint without damaging the indigo dyed motifs?

Thank you!

[Arkcon]

I don't think its logical to expect that any chemical or process will detect "indigo dye on cotton/linen that we want" vs "indigo dye on cotton/linen that we don't want."  The gentlest cleaning methods may remove some some blue color, cleaning white parts and only imperceptibly fading blue parts.  Selective hand washing of some parts may be what's called for -- seems to me the biggest problem is the dress's right sleeve.  And the lower part could be soaked keeping the patterned part dry.  Or just go with the distressed look, its lovely on its own.

[Corribus]

I mean, you can use bleach but as Arckon pointed out, it's going to be difficult to avoid bleaching the parts that are supposed to be blue unless you use a localized application of it.

[wildfyr]

A Tide pen and patience.

[Enthalpy]

From the picture, it seems that the blue parts can be separated. Go to a couturier, ask to remove all blue parts, wash the white ones, and ask the couturier to sew everything together.

As the blue parts are separated, it would be nice to stabilize the indigo there.