Christmas brought this new iron into my sewing studio and I have had a chance to use it a bit. I like it :-) From plugging the base into the electrical outlet to feeling the iron hot enough to use was about 60 seconds. It has a nice weight to it and glides wonderfully smooth on the fabric. It stays hot enough, long enough for my purposes with quilting and heats up quickly when back on the base. As an iron in general, I'd probably rate it a 4 on a 1-5 scale but in the cordless range...I think I would give it a 5. I don't miss moving that cord around.I don't usually use steam for my ironing but thought I should try that feature out to see how effective it was. I needed to iron a large amount of backing material for my mom's quilt (which I will post about later :-). So in went some filtered water. The water tank detaches easily from the iron and is easy to fill. The heating time for steam use is longer. And since I was ironing larger amount of fabric at the time, I could see if the heat held very well. IMHO...it seemed to work fairly well. I used the button to direct an actual stream of water onto some of the fabric where I was trying to get rid of the mark where the fabric had been folded onto the bolt. This worked pretty easily. Re-heating time when returned to the base unit took notably more time. There is some kind of internal control that is supposed to turn off the steam function when the iron isn't hot enough to produce steam effectively. This is to prevent water drops and leaks onto your fabric. I didn't experience any unwanted leaks.
All that being said...it seems to me that someone wanting to use alot of steam for pressing would be better off with an iron that wasn't losing heat while in use....meaning that one with a cord would be more consistently effective. I got the iron (that I recently dropped) because I hated the automatic shut off system in the Rowenta....it kept turning off while in use and leaked water frequently when I tried to use it with steam. That is probably where I stopped using steam features period. It is just easier for me to have a spray bottle of water that I can use for stubborn creases. Keeping that in mind...I personally would rate the steam function with only about a 3 on a scale of 1-5..I just like my water spray bottle better.
So enough about that...now to another fun turn of events :-)
The base does take up room on the ironing board so I looked for alternative places to keep it. There are little shelves or 'iron holders' that can be added to your ironing board or come as part of one but I have a closet where I store my ironing board and can't allow for it to be longer. So is this a nice excuse to shop for furniture? Of course!
I had a messy corner next to where I iron that would be just right for a cupboard or something that I could roll right up next to my ironing board. I looked in town at a couple of antique shops but didn't really find anything workable. Then I looked online for ideas. Nothing really showed up that was fitting my idea but a 2 drawer file cabinet from Pottery Barn looked promising. Was close to ordering it but the $25 surcharge for shipping and the $30 actual shipping and then another $29 tax on the cabinet, the surcharge and the shipping really just started to make this item cost a bit more than it was worth to me. But upstairs I had an old oak file cabinet that had belonged to my MIL...hmmm maybe that will work. So upstairs we go and it works except that I had needed wheels on the bottom of it and this thing has nothing but the sides to it...no bottom basically. DH is thinking we could put a board for base but for some reason thinks it isn't going to work well. I head off to walk dogs and come back to find he has shopped online and found a cute little jelly cabinet that he likes for it. I'm not so sure but since he likes it, we order it. Buyer's remorse sets in...and the next day, I find that this sweet company will cancel the order...no problem. DH heads off to help a friend out. I head back upstairs to check out the file cabinet. I empty it out and manage to slide it down the (carpeted) stairs and into my sewing room. So now about those wheels...this thing slides pretty well just on the plastic protectors it has on the bottom...Hey :-) what about magic sliders....I look in the garage and we even have some right in our possession that are rectangle and just the right size to fit on the meager "bottom" of this cabinet. Free and it works! Now my ironing "center" is complete. Short story made long...
So if you made it this far, you have persevered enough...I'll save the Psalms block for another post! Happy New Year :-)
