Written about 1995.

My iron started acting unreliable and became over-heated a few days ago. Some weeks before, when I had attended a quilt show in Paducah, Kentucky, my traveling companion and I discussed the virtues of the latest, brand new super-sonic, float-on-a-bed-of-steam, drive themselves irons which were not only available during the show, but were on sale at reduced prices.

My friend, an excellent life-long seamstress, said she had given up on steam irons completely. When her last one died, (and she remembered paying close to $100 for it), she had searched the second hand stores for months until she found just the right kind of extra heavy, non-steam, no-holes-in-the-base plate old fashioned iron she wanted. She had it rewired, got out the spray bottle, and was quite happy, thank-you-very-much. I had, nevertheless, looked somewhat longingly at the float-on-a-bed-steam, new super duper irons, not knowing I would have an opportunity to consider their purchase so soon.

I am not a person who buys clothing that requires ironing. The ironing that I do is related to my quilt making. I grew up hating ironing, and perhaps because I have been freed from it for so many years, I have come to regard the little Ironing I have to do in a neutral, if not pleasant way.

It is impossible to iron fast; or rather, it is impossible to iron too fast and do a good job of it. If you rush, or turn the iron up too high, you can end up damaging the garment. Perhaps that is what I found so frustrating about ironing originally. It was there; it had to be done; it took a certain amount of time, and there was just no avoiding it.

I went to junior high school in a time of blouses with puffed, starched sleeves and full cotton skirts, likewise starched and ironed slick. It was a time before the household dryer was commonplace. The few motorized washing machines, with round windows in their doors, were watched by groups of curious children with just a tiny bit less fascination than the first television sets would be watched a few years later. As I frequently remind my own teenage daughter, we just had fewer clothes. They got washed once a week, and, of course, ironed, and they were worn several times before they were washed again. School clothes were taken off after school, so that they would be clean to wear again later in the week.

I wasn’t responsible for much of my own ironing until I was in my teens. As a little girl I had a toy ironing board and iron, and even later, as an older child, I had a small toy electric iron that actually heated up. Ironing is on of those things that look easy, and I thought I could do it. I was allowed to practice on table napkins and dishtowels; later, on pillowcases and sheets. It was only after scorching and damaging a few household items that I was cautioned to observe more carefully and even ask for advice about how to do this. I learned to use a spray bottle and damp down all the clothes, and to wait before ironing them. I learned the mysteries of gooey starch.

But I learned to iron seriously by preparing my gym suit for junior high school gym classes. Gym suits were brought home each weekend for cleaning. Our laundry day was during the week, so the gym suit was out of synchronization with the rest of the washing. Thus, the gym suit was washed out by hand on Saturday and hung out to dry. Then it was sprinkled and wrapped in an old but clean pillowcase sometime Saturday evening or Sunday, then, hopefully, ironed on Sunday night to be taken to school bright and early Monday. Starching the suit was not required, but ironing was. One of the ways to make the fact that the suit was clean and ironed more obvious was to starch it; so many girls, myself included, did that.

The gym suit was not an easy garment to iron. It snapped down the front and had a pocket. The “bottoms” were gathered around the leg and thus puffed, like bloomers. We all knew that the ridiculousness of this garment’s construction was so that boys wouldn’t be able to see our underwear as we played sports. We tried to make these silly outfits more fashionable by rolling up the elastic legged bottoms as high as our teachers would allow. But this was all after they were delivered to school in neatly folded, starched bundles each week.

Scorching was the most serious risk with these garments. One time I scorched a leg so badly I could smell it all week during gym class, and the brown burn mark never really washed out. I scorched other blouses. I scorched skirts. I probably scorched most of the garments I owned at one time or another, until the advent of the steam iron. And the steam iron didn’t stop my scorching all together. It just made it harder for me to do.

Thus, like the Amish, I was pleased with the advent of wash-and-wear clothing. It was late in high school, or maybe I had already started college, when the first daring housewife hung out these marvelous new shirts (for men, of course) to dry on hangers, dripping wet. When I got my first job after college and felt enormously affluent, I still had my clothes ironed at a laundry. Then slowly, over the years, the fashions and technology changed. Clothes were designed to be tumbled dry in the new automatic dryers; rumpled, soft cottons became fashionable. People, at least in North America, owned lots and lots of clothes.

So it is somewhat strange that I find myself ironing at all. When I first started quilt making, about six years ago, I did not own an iron. I resisted buying one, and the companion ironing board, until it became just too obvious that an iron and ironing board would, in fact, make my work much easier. And they did. And I’ve used the iron enough to wear it out in six years and face choosing a new one. Should I go all out for the latest model super-steam version, or like my seamstress friend, hunt the second hand shops for an old-fashioned, simpler-but-better model?

I haven’t made up my mind yet.