Session 3 - Demo, Ironing and Starching

Edwina dragged her ironing board up the sidewalk to the house. She seemed to be handling it all ok, her purse and bag with the iron on one arm and her other arm seemingly buckled around the long board. If she was stepping on a boardwalk rather than a sidewalk, you'd think she was about to go surf-boarding the way she walked with purpose and excitement.

Edwina is about 80, (really, who has a name like Edwina and is not that old?), is about 5'3" and always always wears a snappy outfit with jewelery and earrings or the "the most" scarf. Her grey hair is nicely fixed because she goes to the "beauty parlor" every week. She is always put together.

She came within about three feet of the stoop to my house, all smiling and cheerful to be one of our speakers of the day, and wouldn't you know it, that gosh-dern ironing board decided to open. She was one minute gripping the board and then the next moment the board was standing on one set of legs with the other set flying straight in the air. If that ironing board was female, which I strongly believe all ironing boards are, that is hardly a stance I would choose for its propriety.

Thankfully, the two women behind her helped her out and got the now discombobulated contraption into the house. Edwina, also accustomed to irregularities in her snappy world, came in laughing with the rest of us.

We set up and gathered the women, already gabbing and giggling, around the dining table where I had also set up a portable ironing board on the table. I had a sample men's dress shirt from the dry cleaners, perfectly starched and pressed, to compare our work to this morning. Also on hand were two wrinkled, but clean, shirts. Aggie was the volunteer to try it as Edwina taught it.

Edwina is a widow but was married to a preacher and raised several children in her four-score-plus years of life. She always felt the need to look her best and to make sure her family did too. She has pulled wrinkles out of more tough surfaces that a Hollywood dermatologist would be totally jealous of her skills.

She showed us the most obvious places of the shirt that need closer attention; the collar, buttons and facing, cufffs and shoulders. She used the end of the ironing board, which suddenly decided to be her friend, to press the shape of the shirt into the shoulders. She did this by pulling the neck and collar over the narrow end of the board first and just enough to slide a bit of the sleeve onto the end. It made a smooth fit and Edwina could iron easily without getting any fabric caught in a fold and accidently pressing a nice crease into the front. I have done this several times to my own annoyance. Aggie did a splendid job of following the instructions Edwina gave. Aggie demonstrated how to make the neck line area stand tall by pressing the iron between the top button and the collar and then giving the collar a little tug. That's a neat little trick.


She also used the back, square part, of the board and fit it between the sleeves as she ironed the back of the shirt. How about that . . . it looked like the other end of the board was just made for such a purpose.

She described how irons have a layered groove at the pointed tip of the iron so that it can iron around buttons. Several women exclaimed, "oh, I didn't know that", and moved up closer to see what they had apparently missed all their lives. Edwina demonstrated that as she ironed around buttons, the grooved worked to lift the button out of the way so that that tip of the iron could press the fabric underneath. That was a cool (or rather "hot") finding.

She told stories, as women are likely to do while working on a routine task, as she worked. She remembered heating an iron iron (as opposed to a stainless steel iron) on the stove to get it hot enough to press out their clothes.

She also remembered the days when they used borax powdered starch. They would mix the dry starch in a bowl of water and then dip just the collar, border and cuffs into the mixure. We wondered how they did that without getting the rest of the shirt wet. So, of course, she demonstrated. We watched as she first folded the cuffs back and forth in about 1 inch folds, accordian style and held that bunch in her one hand. She then gathered the collar and folded it back and forth the same way and held that in her one hand too, with the blousie parts of the shirt hanging down. Finally, she zig-zag folded the button border up the same way and held what looked like a fabric flower bud waiting to explode. She said that after they folded up the parts that needed to be starched, they just dunked them in the water and starch mixture and put it in the refrigerator.

Ok, I was really following the whole thing until the refrigerator part. I started thinking, 'that's what I get for asking an elderly woman to do a demonstration'. But, I was wrong because after several astonished looks and a gasp, Edwina explained. In those days, you would mix up your starch and dip the shirt sections all at one time rather than do the mix each day. Usually, there were too many shirts to iron all at one time, especially when you did laundry once a week, so, to keep the borax starch from going bad, they kept the whole thing fresh in the fridge. Well, I'll be a monkey's uncle. The things women spent their time on.

Today of course, we have spray starch to use. And, we probably don't have so many items to iron that we have to save some in the fridge. Aggie said that when she starches, she starches the inside of the garment, rather than the outside, so that the iron's surface doesn't get sticky. That's a good idea.

She also said they ironed the sheets and underwear. I think it was Annette who asked why they did that because she had heard that and had always wondered. Clearly, the sheets weren't made out of the fine threaded fabric we have today. They were rough milled cotton and the thread count was probably less than 100 per square inch. So when they slept on the sheet, it was rough on their skin and chaffed. If they ironed the sheets, they would be smoother and easier to sleep on. The same was true of the underwear they wore. Today's nicest sheets are 600 threads per square inch, which means there's little possibility of actually feeling the threads on your skin. Of course, we have different sources of thread than raw cotton to use today also. I can't imagine all that time spent just ironing to make your family more comfortable. No wonder my Irish female ancestors took in ironing for extra pay. Now it makes sense.

We had a fun time chatting about our own experiences of ironing. One woman said that when she doesn't feel like she has accomplished anything, she will iron. She said that everytime she pressed out a wrinkle, she told herself, 'see there, I've fixed a problem today'. Who knew that ironing could be an uplifting experience. I never thought of that. Several stories of finger burns and of the career woman in a hurry to iron a smudge of wrinkles out of her skirts while wearing it.

We also had a few remedies for getting out scorch marks. Since these are really slight burns on the fabric, and if not too deep, they may be scrubbed with an steel-wool pad. If you damage the fabric with the steel-wool, I guess you just need to admit defeat and throw the thing out.

Joan said she just throws her ironing on top of her tread mill so she has an excuse to not do either. With that, we finished the demonstration in smiles.