 Hi, I'm Rebecca Pimesmith Dressmaking. Welcome back to my channel. I'd like to especially give a warm welcome to all the new subscribers in the last few weeks. This channel has grown so quickly after COVID. I'm utterly astounded and if you really like what I'm doing here and what you see me working on, please could you subscribe and click the notification bell. This tells YouTube that this is a channel worth suggesting to other people who might be looking for information and research and sewing tips, especially for historical dressmaking. How is it September already? It's back to school time. So in the next month or so while I'm recovering from tendonitis, we'll talk about some good books and pattern recommendations, especially for people who are new to this time period for sewing for the 18th century. We'll also have a look at how to set up your workspace, especially given that this is a period that usually involves a lot of yardage. Starting off this week, I'm picking up on the question of gravity feed irons. There's a lot of interest in these and it comes up in sewing groups on a fairly regular basis and people want to know what are they, how do they work, how do you use them with the basic question being should I get one, right? Is it worth it? So in this week's video, I'm going to show you mine. I got it in April so I've been using it for a bit over four months now and to cut a long story short, I love it. I would never go back to a normal iron ever again. Should you get one? Well it depends. If you use an iron as much as I do virtually all the time, every day like I do, yes you should. The bonus today in showing you how to use my iron, I will demonstrate how I prep linen sewing threads. Yes, I both wax and iron my threads just as historical trailers did in the 18th century and earlier and up to the present day. I'll show you how I do it and explain why it makes such a big difference. So let's get started. Theiosyncrasies and ironing always is, a good iron is always, you know, nearly your best friend but this I'm pretty impressed with. So I walk you through just how it's set up. I've got the table, I've got a portable on wheels, kind of built up kitchen island sort of trolley that has been padded up. It's got a heat reflective layer underneath and then a couple of layers of very heavily very densely felted wool and then a plain muslin cover. So that can move around my workshop very easily and I normally use it with the water tank is up on the wall as I showed before when we're setting it up and the plug is right here and normally while I'm working I have it arranged this way and I just walk right up and this but for filming because of all the fabric shelves here I set it at right angles to that so that I can show you how I use it. First thing power the wall that's on and then power on switch. Now it's not lit up because the dial setting is on off so it's got settings zero up to five, five being the hottest and I am normally between four and five for mostly linen's, patiently cotton's that work alright so that's kind of my default is sort of pushing five and you can see the heat is come on now as this is all heating in this unit with water that has cold water that is fed up from the tank fed down I should say fed down to the tank it does take a few minutes for this to heat up enough to produce steam if you don't need steam then you probably don't have to wait quite as long for it to get up to temperature but I usually like to have that steam on top so I go ahead and wait good time to sort out my materials beginning of the day or go make a cup of coffee. One of the most regular uses I have for an iron any iron is to iron or press heat through my linen threads that I use for sewing I always wax my thread with the quality 100% of these wax linen thread is naturally strong even when it gets wet waxing it smooths the fibers so that it coats better with the friction of pulling the thread repeatedly through fabric as you stitch the more wax that you can get impregnated into the fibers and smoothed the better the better your thread will behave a lot less of tangling, fraying even breakage or knotting anything like that the thread just behaves beautifully I I find an iron just makes such a difference I can get away without ironing for very short lengths but the minute we start dealing with a normal stitching length of sort or length of your arm a bit more than your elbows and what I do and what I've done is I have a pressing pop that is just long enough to enclose fully the lengths that I cut so I use that as sort of my yardstick for the lengths that I cut and I know that that is about the length that I would normally measure each on my arm for normal stitching so I just go ahead and as it comes off the roll you can see it's got a little bit of a curl wax will help that a little bit because it does smooth the fibers but in waxing the thread pulling it through I rotate it very slightly with my fingers up here so that I can coat all around full length the thread and then I give it usually one full go now make sure it can spin freely so that it doesn't tangle or not there and that just evenly distributes the wax on there it does mean that the bit you've been ripping here sometimes doesn't have very much wax applied to it and I sometimes will then go ahead and just just a little bit wax but be careful to not be rubbing those fibers in the opposite direction of the rest sometimes I wait till I'm actually threading the needle and then I very carefully wax the tip just as I'm just as I'm threading the needle but there's one and on my pressing clock meanwhile my oh my iron is just about reach temperature I see the light has gone off prepare these lengths I usually do about half a dozen at a time and depending on what I'm doing that day whether I know that I'm going to be changing threads or whether I'm going to be using the same thread or bigger part of like right now my with my stays I am doing boning channels so I am doing lots of lengths of this thread so I can really never have too many prepped as I get near the end of all those boning channels I will then sort of estimate how many to do at a time so I don't end up with a lot left over that I need to store somewhere oops see I was a little bit careless and caught thread underneath my thumb so that it created a little knot there even where it is that it's so close to the end I'm just going to trim that bit off that was me being careless so let it spin freely stretch out sometimes to release it if the wax makes it a little bit stickier in your fingers then you can kind of lay it down on your pressing clock and press each end lightly it should then grab the pressing clock a little bit right I've got three prepped there for this purpose as the iron has all repeated up I'm going to go ahead and fold pressing clock back over it so I've got three lengths of thread in there coated with wax I don't really need steam for this steam unless iron is this button now did you see that whoa I can see it in the air I'm not sure the camera's picking it up but there it's just clouds of steam coming out yeah but it has just a very very slight delay you press it and there is like a split second delay before you get steam now the instructions say not to hold that button down more than 10 seconds at a time and I find that really a split second and as I press I might I will if I'm wanting continuous steam I will just tap that every few seconds sort of every seven eight seconds something like that this does get heavy I hope it up with this these are heavy irons but it's the weight of them that makes pressing on large lengths of fabric on huge lengths of fabric just just starting a project it's the weight that does have the job for you that and the abundant steam I mean you're coming from a what is it a cool I don't know how many liters tank water tank up there you've just thought in you've got amazing amounts of steam when I started four months ago I put I filled that tank half full just half and I've only just recently had to then top up again back up to the half level I'm not feeling all the way to the top I'm just a little bit nervous about climbing up there on a ladder with the amount holding the weight I'm not particularly strong and my balance is not to be good so but four months four months that was a lot of use the other thing about the instructions I'm told is to not rest it like this like you know with normal iron and it's kind of that electrical base is kind of at an angle kind of discourages that so if you try to do it like that it the weight doesn't really want anyway we're ready to iron so I've got the job if it's been sitting for a little while because there's water in the system that just sits there in the hose if it's not feeding through regularly I do give it a good blast just to kind of film it whoa do you see that that's holding it down for about two seconds I'm good again and we're getting quite a lot of sizzling which suggests to me that there's a little bit of residue on the on the protective plate that I could manage to fit to roundling a bit but basically here we go it is once you're using it it is just like an iron now I'm wanting to smooth the fibers and remembering that my cut edge is at one end so that's kind of the head that's going to be the end of the threads that feed into the needle and slide to the fabric now I will go ahead and give it a little bit of steam now if you apply your steam relatively early once it's been heated up and haven't kind of cleared the jets or checked to see if they might need any clearing um it will sometimes leave the pools water but I'll tell you the thing is so hot it just felt water which is iron it right out iron it dry in a few seconds it's no time at all okay this silicon rest plate is where it lives even when it's hot I have got an extra pad of a folded up piece of that heavily felted wool just as extra I don't even know that it's needed but just makes me feel a little bit better that it's there so here are my threads and all the curl is basically gone now and the wax you can't feel any excess waxiness really on the thread that wax has been pushed through into the fibers so now as it's being pulled through your fabric it will continue to kind of reinforce that smoothing action um I don't get any tangling or breakage now that I press as well as wax I waxed along on its own for years without ironing and then read about this and I thought oh that sounds bit quickly that sounds bit time consuming and then I thought I read I read somewhere and I don't even remember where that tailors in the 18th century probably open many other foods too that the irons they use the system they use if they would make a whole bunch of pre cut lengths already go and then do all the pressing of their threads at once so they would have a little stock and then I understand then they could collect them together and twist or or do a figure eight create a skein a small skein of yarn like what you get with embroidery threads and that would be all the sewing friends all prepared and they'd be able to track which was the um uh threading the needle end and which would be the tail so they'd know which direction it's coming through the fabric so that's three there um a couple more notes about the iron itself it does sit there and stay hot all day it doesn't go any hotter I don't think that it um there's any danger of it going like dangerously hot it does switch itself off that is a thermostat so it will stay to that optimal temperature and it will switch off when it reaches that temperature and then back on again to keep it there so you can go away do other things and come back an hour later two hours later and it's still there at your optimal temperature um that's something that's not not recommended for a standard iron do bear in mind that while it's got this coating that protects your hand when you use it the whole unit does get quite hot and stays hot so when you put your hand here you can feel the heat radiating off and so if you bear that mind you get used to it and remember only grip the handle and just be aware that the other bits that bit is actually quite cool that's fine that's cool so it's basically i'm feeling the heat radiating from up from the iron itself yeah that plate bit that's a bit hot um that's it really they're just they're amazing they're amazingly simple if you get a good brand a reputable brand like silver star is and Seporo i think Seporo is um then a lot of the parts over time if they start to just wear out or or play up a little bit these are all replaceable and they're quite straightforward just by anybody with a little bit of basic common sense and knowledge of mechanics and a little bit of perhaps of electrical business you basically switch everything off of course and i haven't done this yet myself but i do know i've researched that these parts are you can get aftermarket you can get um sorry after sales so they are original brand they are completely compatible you're not voiding a warranty or anything by doing that and um basically the thing can last forever can you say that for normal iron they're not that expensive either there's somewhere in the around you can find them you know sort of give or take 10 in the hundred dollar 100 pound kind of range i got this from america and i paid all the import duty and charts and everything like that and i reckoned that if i bought that it's still all told the total of it came about the same as the price of maybe two no more than two uh decent quality standard type irons which i typically the kind of use i put them to they don't last more than a year so something here that could last me 10 years has paid for itself within two and and the job it does is just it's remarkable so i would hand over heart absolutely wholeheartedly i would absolutely recommend these um it's worth every penny and it's not it's not that expensive in the first place so if you've been thinking about it now you can get then you do need to pay attention to voltage and that's why in the filming in the shots that i've taken of this i have stressed voltage that if you buy a machine that's all wired up in the solenoid tells you what it's powered for what voltage um you may need a voltage converter that actually switches from one currency to another but even if you've got the right current strength you might need also a plug adapter which is what i've got because silver star they come in 110 volt for the us and i believe canada uses 110 as well but europe and the complete and the uk we have 220 yes 220 volt so these come you can get them um and they should say right in the listing wherever whatever online shop you're using they should say which voltage they have uh if it's 220 then they come with a european plug not a uk plug so that's where my it's a eu to uk adapter um but that's just a plug adapter it is the right current right voltage um and that was essential i would have cost me another you know another up to a hundred pounds for a voltage converter if i had bought a us powered version which for long time i thought that was the only thing that was going to be able to find so i was really really pleased when i found this one in a reputable brand there are some other brands out there that ship directly from china and things and i just didn't really know how reputable they were but silver stars did uh i think there's another one called bold star and i don't know if they're really company do not but this is silver star and brilliant thanks for watching i hope you found that interesting and helpful if you have any more questions about them anything i didn't cover please pop them in the comments below and thanks again for watching i am astounded how quickly this channel has grown thank you for making that happen as a new channel i'm at kind of a critical make or break point as to whether youtube puts any of my videos in front of more people who might be searching for information about historical dress or costuming i'd love to get my channel in front of more people who really love this as we do so many people don't even know that there's a historical costuming community already on youtube you can help tell youtube that i am producing good quality content and that my channel is worth cross promoting to potential new viewers by watching videos all the way through when you can i know that some are long so feel free to save to a playlist and come back when you can because youtube notices that too youtube wants to promote videos that it sees viewers actually watching so if people start watching a video and then they stop click out switch to something else youtube can think hmm must not be a very good video also sticking around true ads if you can helps build a channel's credibility with youtube and that brings me to ads my channel is now monetized i can tell youtube which of my videos they can put ads against i do not let them just throw ads at any and all on my channel and i can also say where in the video i'm happy for ads to appear the beginning the middle the end now i personally as a viewer really don't like mid-roll videos so any video that i allow ads on i always say just at the front or possibly also at the back but never in the middle but meanwhile i have no control over what ads appear with the content and who the ad creators are i don't get any advance notice much less any sort of approval power i understand that if there's something that is really objectionable that i can block certain ad creators so bear that in mind if you see something appearing an ad on my channel that you think just feels wrong please let me know about it and i will try to track that down and get that stopped so all that said there's been a lot of changes especially for a new channel where i'm learning the basics still as well i really hope you enjoy watching i'm trying to keep to a weekly schedule so new videos come out on thursdays usually an evening uk time and on that note i hope to see you next week bye for now