I don’t mind pressing blocks or unwrinkling lengths of normal width fabric, but I detest ironing extra wide fabric. No matter how you place it on your ironing board, some of it drapes onto the floor and crumples. It is a never ending wrinkle battle!
However, I like using extra wide fabric for large quilts, because it minimizes additional piecing for the back of the quilt. The large fabric minimizes uneven effects on my carefully pieced quilt top. So how can I solve this dilemma?
My husband came up with a perfect solution – steaming! We pinned the quilt back to the leaders (fabric holders) of my longarm and draped the quilt over the backside of the quilt machine. Then, we steamed about a foot at a time. We were careful not to get to close to the pantograph table as we didn’t want to warp it. After each steaming, we rolled a bit more onto the rails, being careful give the hot fabric time to cool. So the fabric actually experienced three separate steps: steam, cool, roll. By sectioning the fabric, we were able to keep moving. The process was quicker than ironing and provided much better results.
We used a Shark Professional Portable Fabric Steamer. With a little distilled water, we were in business. I would strongly recommend steaming for quilt backs!
Happy Quilting 🙂
Laureen