Introduction:
When I visited my sisters in Ohio a year ago, I helped finish a couple of quilts. I did the ironing; none of the precise stuff. At the very end of the process I was given the job of ironing out any hard wrinkles found on the fabrics from when they were originally on the bolt. It was easy with the special spray they had just for that purpose. Now, a year later, I called to find out what that magic spray was.
This is one of my “scrolls”. Linen background with a felted piece I made in a workshop at Slow Fiber Studios.
This is what the linen looked like when I began working on the piece. I knew I could iron it flat if I dampened it thoroughly and ironed and ironed it dry. And then was careful not to wrinkle it while handling it to put on the felt piece.
Remember this lovely gazar silk in a previous post that took days to iron flat? After that post a friend who among other things has a dry cleaner license emailed me. And she said that dry cleaners use a “wrinkle releaser”. That made sense to me when I thought of them preserving wedding gowns after the wedding when the gown would come in terribly wrinkled.
I looked for wrinkle releasers on the web and found there were so many I really was confused. Besides none of them said they worked on silk particularly. I got the brilliant idea of calling my sister and finding out what her magic potion was. This is what she uses—and has for a long time, even ironing her husband’s shirts. It’s a spray starch. It works wonders by making ironing easy and fast. Use a fine spray and test it on the fabric before ironing the whole piece to see how it works. If you get too much on, it will wash out. My sister suggested using it on the wrong side but I found with a fine spray I could work on the right side. You spray and smooth it into the cloth, then iron and quickly it irons flat. It did wonders on that gazar silk—removing all the wrinkles and making it easy to handle without wrinkling it more.
Here’s how smooth and lovely the grey linen became. I bought a gallon of it!