I use either Niagara non-aerosol spray starch or Best Press. The hard part is being patient and not ironing immediately after spraying. You need to let the starch penetrate the fabric. It really does help in getting flat seams and less distortion on the fabric, especially on bias edges. I too use a piece of muslin on my pressing surface to keep it clean. It's easy to throw that piece of muslin in the washer every now and then. If my iron gets gunky on the bottom I use Mr. Clean Magic Eraser on a cold iron. It works great at getting the sole plate shiny clean again. I have a shiny metal sole plate on my iron and not a Teflon coated one so I don't know how it would work on the coated sole plates.