I bought one to use at UFO's and liked it so much bought another one for my sewing room. Craftsy frequently has them at reduced prices. I also saw a smaller one at Quilter's Day Out for $18.

I was glad to see this on here. I am considering buying the large one. The people at the LQS rave about them..

Sometimes I do some wool applique, other times it's just my quilting blocks. The wool mat has helped flatten out my seams and works great to press shapes for wool applique. My mat is small, I'm considering going for the big one soon.

I bought the larger one a couple of years ago and it fits on top of my ironing table (TV table covered in batting and silver fabric) and I love it.

I have not seen these mats in person. Both my grandmothers used felted wool blankets on their ironing boards, a habit I picked up from them. How does the wool mat differ?

I will have to check at Quilt Canada next month and see if any of the vendors are carrying them.

How thick are these wool ironing mats? Are they 1/2" thick or less?

One more question -- Are these pressing mats actually 100% wool or are they felt, which is wool and recycled products? The reason that I am asking this question is because they have wool felt carpet pads that are a lot cheaper and then they have 100% wool carpet pads.

I used one when I was on a retreat and loved it. My LQS got them, but they are pricey. My friend and I went halves on it with the cost and then cut the mat in half. It is still plenty large enough for what we need.

Bonnie Hunter was using a wool pressing mat on her latest Quilt Cam, Aprill 11th (I think). She says you shouldn't use Best Press or starch with them, but she uses a water misting bottle from a beauty supply store. I like to starch a lot, so that would be a drawback.

I recently bought a clapper, which is an old fashioned device for making seams stay flat. It's a heavy chunk of wood that you place over each seam as soon as you iron it. I think it works by quickly reducing the temperature. I was surprised by how well it works. My seams stay perfectly flat. Google "clapper pressing tool". They come in different sizes, and a large one costs about $25. This could be used in combination with a wool mat, too, but might be overkill if either one works well alone.

I have wondered whether felting an old wool sweater wouldn't produce a mat that would be very similar. You could sew the front, back and opened out sleeves together to get more thickness. Since it's already felted, it could be tossed in the washer and dryer, so using starch would be no problem. Old 100% sweaters are cheap at Goodwill and similar thrift stores, and sometimes they've already been felted for you. If not, you have to be sure it doesn't say "washable" because that would defeat our intent. In Texas wool sweaters are not common because of our climate, but I was able to get one some years ago for a craft project. I'm going to dig around and see if I have any large enough scrap, just to experiment.

I had heard this as I was getting ready to throw out one of my old cutting mats (I had had it over 25 years). It is just the perfect size to put under my wool mat and works great. I thought about gluing it on but decided that I did not want to do this in case I needed to turn the wool mat over for some reason. I got some elastic and made 2 bands for the top and bottom instead.