Originally Posted by Bye_the_Bye
Originally Posted by karenpatrick
Originally Posted by the casual quilter
I'll pass along a old trick my grandmother used. She sprinkled the wrinkled fabric with water until it was all damp and then she rolled it loosely, sealed it in a plastic bag and put it in the refrigerator overnight and ironed it the next day.
My mother used to do the same thing although I could never figure out why. We didn't have a clothes dryer when I was a kid so she hung the laundry on the line outside to dry. When it was dry she would take it in and then sprinkle it and get it wet again. Then she would roll it up and put it in a clothes baket and iron it the next day. Why not just take it down still damp and roll it and store it until the next day to be ironed? A mystery that I was never able to ask her.
By rolling it up & letting it sit for a while, the sprinkled water evened out into an overall dampness of each item. Remember, we did not have steam irons back then. We put the rolled up clothes in the refrigerator to keep mildew at bay in the summertime. The mystery of why your mother didn't take it down while it was still damp was probably because it was too time consuming to keep running out to the clothesline to check on the dryness of the clothes in the hot sun when there was so much more to do inside the home.
And besides all of that you just didn't iron on washing day. You ironed on ironing day.