Written by Laura Chaney, daughter
This post is part of our Quilter’s Tool Chest where we share our favorite quilting notions, tools and gadgets. Our first ten posts will focus our top recommended notions, tools and gadgets for new quilters. These are the perfect items to help a new quilter start building her quilty tool chest. If you’re already a crafter these could be great tools to add to your arsenal to crossover and try a new craft.
Today we’re talking about the importance of having an iron with steam. In an earlier post I shared how I use my Rowenta travel iron to set up a portable pressing station and iron small items with ease (and without burning my fingers!)
There are lots of different kinds of irons out there including cordless ones. You might need different irons for different purposes or different stages of your creating. I tend to use irons for three different purposes.
1. Prepping fabric for cutting and sewing. Ironing helps get all of the little wrinkles out so that you’re cutting and sewing your fabric at its true size and shape.
2. Fusing fabric together with fusibles. This is where having an iron WITH steam is super important since many fusibles require steam to adhere. Mom and I tend to do a lot of work with quarter inch fusible tape for our containers from Contain It!.
3. Getting fabric into the shape we want by folding and steaming. The most common example of this is when we make binding for our quilts. Mom and I make our binding by cutting our strips at 2-1/2″, folding and pressing it wrong sides together so that we end up with a 1-1/4″ piece to attach to our quilts.
Here are a few links to irons (with steam!) on Amazon. What are some other ways that you use an iron to help you sewing and crafting?
All product links are Amazon affiliate links which help support Prairie Sewn Studios. No additional compensation was provided for this post, just sharing some products we love to use to sew, craft and quilt!
This content was originally published on Prairie Sewn Studios on March 2, 2015, and is being reproduced here for Throwback Thursday. #TBT
Leave a Reply