Iron Graveyard

Do you ever feel afraid of your iron?  I recently realized that I've been feeling that way for the past year or so.

My fear has been all about its death.  Especially death while I'm trying to meet a deadline or in the midst of a sewing marathon.  Will this be the moment that it steams its last?

My iron graveyard

When I started sewing, I had a Black & Decker iron that I purchased the year I graduated from college (1996, to be exact).  It didn't really steam worth a damn and the temperature was hard to control.  But since at that time I was sewing mainly with quilting cottons, I got by.

But on a trip to the in-laws (yes, I packed a sewing project, just in case), I tried my mother-in-law's Rowenta Focus.  It was big!  It had steam!  It was hot even at the tip!  And it had multiple temperature settings (not just hot-getting-hotter).  I was in such raptures over it that she let me take it home.

After about 18 months of heavy sewing and pressing, it died.  One day it just wouldn't get hot.  So I took out my Black & Decker again and searched on Ebay to see if I could find a used iron.  Note to everyone:  THIS WAS A BIG MISTAKE!  DO NOT DO THIS.  Okay, I got a new Rowenta (Powerglide 2) for $35, but from the moment I started using it, I knew its time was short.  It had great steam but poor temperature control.  And I could just tell it was ailing - some sort of psychic black aura that surrounded it like a shroud.  Whenever I went to press something I heard this song in the back of my head.  And I'm sure I hunched my shoulders just like the kid in the video, too.

It did hang on, surprisingly, for 6 months, but last week it, too, died.  So while I DID NOT want to spend $150 on an iron at this particular time (didn't the Sewing Godesses understand that I really wanted some pretty new labels????), I did my due diligence on Pattern Review's website and narrowed my choices down to a Reliable V100 Digital Vapor Generated iron and a gravity feed iron, Pacific PSI-5E, both available at Wawak.com.  When I remembered that I sometimes like to iron things in front of the TV, the choice was clear and I clicked "buy" on the Reliable.

Then I waited, glad I had the Black & Decker as back-up, but I didn't really trust it with the silk for the wedding dress.  Friday, delivery day, arrived and I must have checked the front step about 30 times.  No box.  No box.  NO BOX!  Even when the tracking status on the Fedex website said "delivered", I still had no box.

And then on Saturday morning, after 17 years, the Black and Decker died.  Now I had no iron.

I tried dealing with Fedex over the weekend and they were useless.  Luckily I live in a great town and when I posted on our Facebook page that I was in need of an iron, I had two offers within 5 minutes.  On Monday I called Wawak and they were fantastic!  The woman I spoke to knew who I was from my phone number, so I never had to give her my order number (not once and certainly not SEVEN times like with Fedex) and she had a message to Fedex and a new iron on it's way to me within about 3 minutes.

And this is the big, beautiful iron that arrived on Wednesday:

Can't you just hear the stars sing?

It's heavy, so I don't have to push when I'm pressing.  It has glorious steam and heats up quickly.  And, fellow sewists, you can disable the auto shut-off feature.

It even purrs.  Listen:

We'll have to see how it lasts, but I am now armed with a jug of distilled water and I plan to treat it with love and care and hug and kiss it every day.  When it's off, of course.

What's Up: Inspiration, New Heroines, Wool Fabric

I spent Thursday through Saturday at the Original Sewing & Quilts Expo in suburban Schaumburg.  I don't normally think of Schaumburg as a city of excitement, heros, inspiration, and knowledge (sorry, Schaumburg), but it was for me last week!

I had some trepidation approaching the conference.  The logo, website, and language definitely comes across as dated.  I spent a lot of time watching instructors on YouTube before choosing my classes and I certainly found people I wanted to learn from and people I wanted to avoid.  I heard from other sewists that it has become more quilt-oriented over the years (not my interest). I'm happy to say that I had a great time and learned a lot.  I'm not sure that I would attend again, at least not for all three days, but I think my money was well spent.

The way to approach this conference is to see it as a chance to get a surface understanding of what's out there in terms of instructors, patterns, and schools of thought on fitting and pattern alteration.  All of the instructors have DVD programs and/or longer workshops to will give you depth (at a cost).  I think I walked away with an idea of which program(s) I'd want to spend money on in the future to get that depth of knowledge.

It was also motivating to hang out with a bunch of sewists.  I don't consider myself a young person (I'm 42) but I was almost always the youngest person in the room.  So these ladies have been sewing and learning for decades.  I realized how much I have to learn, and want to learn.

And they have fun prize drawings at the end of every day and sometimes at the end of a class.  I won two $30 gift certificates for The Wool House, a Canadian fabric store specializing in wools and wool blends.  They don't have a website or online shop, so I'm not sure how you would find them.  But I purchased these lovely items with my gift certificates:

The top fabric is a wool/silk blend herringbone.  It has beautiful drape and is very soft and light.  I like the selvage edge and may save it for embellishing the hem of whatever I make.  The bottom fabric is a wool/linen blend - I just love the texture of it!  I've not decided yet what I'm going to make with it, but I'm leaning towards Silhouette Pattern's Sheath Dress using the solid color for Guffey seaming detail on the front and back princess seams.

Which brings me to my newfound heroines.  My two favorite instructors were Peggy Sagers (of Silhouette Patterns) and Cynthia Guffey.  They were very different in terms of teaching style and fitting philosophy, but I learned a lot from both of them.  And they've both enjoyed careers similar to the one I hope to eventually carve out for myself: dressmaking, designing, and teaching.  I'll go into more detail about both of them in later posts, but here are a couple of recommendations for my fellow sewists:

Peggy Sagers has a FREE online library of webcasts on a variety of topics.  I highly recommend these.  Peggy broadcasts live every other Monday night (the next webcast will be on sewing with silk) and you can find past webcasts here.  She is also a regular guest on the Channel 20 Program It's Sew Easy.  You can find videos of her on YouTube and in the It's Sew Easy archive.

Cynthia Guffey has a pattern line and a bunch of instructional sewing DVD's.  Her website is a bit sparse, but you'll find her patterns and DVD's there.  You'll find video clips of her on YouTube as well.

I did actually do a bit of sewing this week (finished off a couple of skirt orders that have been hanging around too long), but nothing all that show-worthy.  This week I'll be working on the muslin for Linda's dress and drafting skirt patterns for Bryn and Domenica.  And I hope to try a cowl neck adaption to my new Silhouettes t-shirt pattern!