Last week I moaned about the demise of my Bernette ProGlide Plus iron, which had served me well for many years. It had been developing cracks in the plastic over time, but the final straw came when I dropped it.
SIGH
This happened when I was in the middle of making a Miyake coat, so I ran out and bought the only iron I could find without auto-shutoff, a cheapie Black and Decker.
Wow, what a piece of junk. I have heard sewists say that they were satisfied with their Black and Decker irons, but they must have been talking about an older, better-made model. I couldn't possibly fuse interfacing with this thing.
What else could I do? I ordered myself a Reliable Digital Velocity v100. It arrived on Wednesday, but I had a very busy work week and I didn't open the box until Saturday morning.
OMIGOSH.
This iron is AMAZING!!!
First, this iron is heavy, the way a good iron should be. It's not too heavy, but it's heavier even than my ProGlide. The iron does have an auto-shutoff feature, but you can disable it. This thing creates steam like there is NO tomorrow. Even on the coolest setting, it creates buckets of steam.
The negatives are very minor, but I should mention them. The manufacturer recommends using soft water. I had read that it required distilled water, so I'd purchased it even before the iron arrived, but if your tape water is soft, you can probably get away with using it. When the iron is creating steam, it hums. There is a button on the handle which toggles the "humming"/steam mode and my hand sometimes hits it accidentally. I'm still figuring this out.
I have been sewing on linen all weekend, using my new iron. I am loving it so much and having so much fun with this project, that I could barely tear myself away to even write this blog post. It may be another week or so before I can get this project finished, but had I known this iron would be such a joy to use, I might have dropped my ProGlide much sooner. ;)
Postscript: I did take that nasty B&D back to Target this morning. I got my $13.10 refunded and took it to JoAnn's where I spent it all on topstitching thread for my current project. A much better use of that money!