The Importance of Pressing

Pressing garments is important in order to your pieces look as high quality as possible without any wrinkles. This allows the garment construction of curves and darts to be accentuated if pressed properly.

While I have been pressing at home I have found using the nose of the ironing board most effective in curving areas such as around the bust or hips as I didn’t have my own home tailors ham for those curves. A tailors ham is a tightly stuffed curved pillow used as a curved mold when pressing to make the garment have a better fit.

My iron was set to a high temperature which meant it got rid of the creases almost instantly but also made it hard to go back over places instantly as it was too hot and some items I was scared were too thin to use such a high heat on. In the future I would test other heats and how they effected the fabrics and manipulating heat into pressing the items perfectly.

Another tool useful in pressing is a clapper, this is a block of wood which you use to place on top of your seams to get a crisp and flat seam to give a better finish and help also in the middle of sewing with flat seams. To use it you press your seams and then press down on them with your clapper, this pressure sets the seams flat as the fabric cools.

Sleeve boards are also useful. These are small-scale ironing boards for pressing sleeves and the size allows you to slide on sleeves of a garment and therefore easier to press them and remove creases.

Pressing during garment construction is important as it allows you to make seams flat and therefore easier to sew others together. It is also useful at the end of garment construction to make the item look as high quality as possible to sell.