This post is prompted by my friend Anne, the archivist. You may have read some of her comments, she's an expert on storing papers and documents. This has nothing to do with that though. I'm about to show you how to iron a shirt :)
Anne insisted I show you how I iron a shirt as I once taught her and she swears by my method. Well it's not really mine. I learned it from a tv show in the mid 80's by a lady called Puck who was kind of Martha type woman minus the good looks and great style. She basically cooked, cleaned and once showed how to best iron a shirt. That lesson has been so useful to me and made so much sense as it's such a quick and efficient way to do it. The weekend before last I ironed about 25 shirts in just a bit more than an hour which I believe proves my point. I also got a chance to catch up on some of the Martha episode's I'd recorded during the week before. Ironing is a good thing :)
1. Start of by flattening the collar and iron that.
2. Fold the shirt so the yoke lies flat and iron it. I think it's this step that makes a big difference.
3. Flatten the front of the right arm out and iron that.
4. Flip it over and do the other side.
5. Flatten the cuff and iron it. Then do steps 3-5 on other arm too. Or it would look funny.
6.Pull the left front of shirt over the ironing board and iron that.
7. You then pull the shirt little by little towards you and iron as you go along...
8....until you reach the other side. And you're done!
I always button the top button before hanging. This ensures the shirt keeps it's newly ironed shape in the closet. Also use real hangers, the wire cry cleaning ones will encourage you to hang the shirts too close and they'll crease.
Ps. Sorry about choosing the red check for the photos. I see now that it looks weird on screen but I couldn't bare redo the whole process with a plain shirt...
