Another Indispensible Tool - Pressing Sheets

With the increasing use of fusibles to make art quilts, someone had to come up with a way to prevent your iron and ironing board cover from becoming "gunky" (technical term). Fortunately, iron pressing sheets came on the market and have saved many an iron and cover from this horrible fate! 

My Pressing Sheets

Above you see a photo of my two pressing sheets. These sheets are used to prevent adhesives or sticky stuff from adhering to the iron bottom or ironing board cover. By adhesives I mean anything from fusibles to glue to Bo Nash powder to paint.  If you don’t want it on the iron or board, place a pressing sheet in between. 

You can place your fabric with adhesive on the sheet, fold the sheet over the fabric and iron. It’s a nice little sandwich and nothing sticky gets on the iron or board. You may want to get two of these, like I have, to allow for a large bit of fabric to be ironed. Each sheet is about 11" x 17", which is adequate for most of my needs. 

Sandwich

All the pressing sheets I have seen are slightly opaque, so you can see through them to view the positioning of the fabric. I also use them to press sheers that may melt if given direct heat from the iron.  I keep mine at the ironing board area at all times so they are handy to pull out.

To clean adhesive from them just wipe them with a damp cloth. So far I haven't had paint stick to them, but I haven't tested that to a great extent. I can't promise it won't stick or stain. 

Parchment paper can be used as an alternate to pressing sheets. I keep a roll of parchment paper the length of my ironing board in my sewing area so I can completely cover the board for really messy jobs. 

Parchment roll

I hope you find this information helpful. Thanks for visiting my blog!