We had our first Beginner quilting class last night. It’s be quite a while since I taught this class. It was a bit rough but the students successfully created their first blocks with REALLY good points. I appreciate their patience while I get my teaching skills refreshed.
One of the things I meant to cover included tool maintenance: Oil your sewing machine, a new needle is always a good place to start when you have trouble with your stitches, put a new blade in your rotary cutter. I’m not 100% sure I got them all in but I’m sure that over the 8 weeks of the class we will get to cover all of them.
I hardly ever get to cover cleaning the soleplate of your iron, with an actual dirty iron to use for demonstration. This is really important, especially if you use spray starch/sizing or iron-on adhesives (pretty much all the interfacings I use are iron-on) which can leave adhesive residue on your iron. You can also get residue or melted fabric on your iron if you accidentally iron synthetic fabrics with a hot iron. These can be hard to remove and you don’t want to scrub the soleplate of your iron with an abrasive. A smooth soleplate is really important to successful pressing. And a clean soleplate won’t leave ‘stuff’ smeared on your fabric, potentially ruining your project.
I was rather pleased when I pulled out the class iron and discovered this:
What is on the iron? It looks like it might be the print from a shopping bag. Whatever it is I don’t want it melted onto the quilt block I’m making or anything else I’m pressing.
Luckily there is a really easy solution to this problem, that doesn’t require the purchase of a new iron. Which is important if you, like me, have a high end iron (the Rowenta steam station is my go to). But even if you have a $20 iron (is that even a thing anymore?!) you don’t want to waste your money replacing it if you don’t have to.
Either of these products will do the job. The Rowenta kit comes with the cleaning product and two clothes. The Magic Iron Cleaner doesn’t come with cloths. The clothes you need are an old (or new) 100% cotton terry cloth washcloth and a piece of 100% cotton flannel (the same size as a wash cloth – at least 12″x12″).
The process is the same for both products.
- Plug in your iron and set it to a hot setting (I use the cotton or linen setting).
- Once your iron is hot squeeze about an inch of the cleaning product onto the terry cloth.
- Run your iron over cloth and the product.
It will smoke and sometimes make a sizzling noise. But, like magic, the stuff on your iron will disappear and you’ll be left with this:
After all the mess is removed you iron over the flannel to remove any remaining cleaner and you are ready to press your fabric.
Honestly the quickest and easiest cleaning job in my house.
Both of these products are available in our store. One tube will clean your iron many times. I consider iron cleaner to be ‘must keep on hand’ item in my house.
Give it a try and let me know what you think.