Meet Midge

Hello my friends. How does this Friday find you? In case you were wondering (I know it's foremost in your minds) where my red and white quilt block updates have been...they haven't. Our hostess in the quilt along needed to take a break, and so we get a break. It was perfectly timed--I don't think I'd have had time to work on any of them lately.

I'd like to introduce you to the newest member of the Sweet Bee creative team. Meet Midge.

Here's why I had to acquire her. I had bought a cheapo iron (I think at CVS?) that got hot, steamed well, and was a good size. Last week and this week it was clicking a little, but sometimes they do that when they're heating up so no thoughts wasted towards that end. It had a half-hour turn off safety feature, which was only annoying because I use it much longer than 30 minutes, and had to unplug/replug to turn it back on. The other night it seemed like the fabric was much hotter than usual when being ironed. I was still going on my merry stitchy way. I was sewing long straps, quite intently, at my machine, when I turned around to pick up my drink, which was sitting on the ironing board. There were long wisps of smoke coming out of it. Not steam, but smoke. It hung in the air, and had a hint of bonfire to the aroma. I unplugged it, stuck my face right up to it to see if it was on fire on the inside (don't tell my boss--I work in the safety department and that was decidedly UNsafe) and yelled for my dad to come in because "my iron might be on fire."

He came in and gave it a once-over. He told me to try it again to see if I could duplicate the issue, but I'm a scaredy-cat when it comes to fire so no way. I emptied it, cooled it, and trashed it. I went to bed with thoughts tumbling through my brain like "What if the timer hadn't turned the iron off? What if I hadn't turned around at that moment to get my drink and seen the smoke?" Obviously there was no issue at that particular moment as no fire or obvious melting resulted. But if I had been unaware of the situation and went to use it again we could have had some serious issues. Scary, and not something I ever considered before.

Do you know how hard it is to find a decent iron? Do people not iron their clothes anymore? I had quite a time finding anything that wasn't $10, or $75 and above. For the amount that I press fabrics and seams I could have justified the investment, but I've been emptying my pockets a lot lately so I went cheaper. I used it last night and was quite happy with it. I checked the reviews today and they weren't all roses and sunshine, but I'm hoping they were user error (as a lot of people don't check out the directions first and wonder why they have issues). We'll see. But for now, welcome Midge. I hope you fit in with Lola, Persephone, and Xerxes (my sewing machine, my AccuQuilt cutter, and my laptop). We're all in this together :)