Preparing quilt yardage.....
 

Please be patient with me I'm new at quilting. I have washed my yardage and am ready to iron it. I understand pressing is important but, do you press or can you iron ( like a shirt) your yardage? I realize this probably sounds like a silly question but, I'm more than a little paranoid about all the quilting rules.

I use my steam iron on everything. Some fabrics iron better than others. It's after you cut your pieces that some say to not use steam and to press vs. ironing to not distort the pieces.

Donnajean is right. You don't want to distort your fabric. I usually press towards me then then start over to the right and again press toward me paralleling the selvages. Then when finished with that section, I move the fabric about 10" and start over again. Make sure you fabric is laying flat.

If I need to iron I wait until I start cutting a pattern. I wash and dry my fabrics and fold using a ruler. Fabrics are smooth and only need to press the tighter folds.

I pre-wash everything and then I iron it. Yes, iron it - takes much too long to press it and I haven't seen any problems develop because of this.

Don't worry about the all the quilting rules. This isn't rocket science ;)

Me too! and horrors of horrors I iron my blocks too! And guess what, I turn out some fine quilts and I do some complex patterns to boot. I don't use steam. When I iron my yardage I try to do it while the fabric is still a bit damp. If I left it in the dryer too long I use a spray bottle to dampen as I go.

Yeah what willferg said!! There are no hard and fast rules in quilting (except try really hard not to cut yourself and if you do, try really really hard not to bleed on the fabric!!) You just want your fabric smooth. Do it what ever way makes sense to you.

I really like it that you said, if you do cut yourself, try not to bleed on your fabric.