A-hem

I am writing this as much for the purpose of venting as for sharing. Hopefully my experience will help others remember that when you get frustrated and feel stupid trying to accomplish what seems like a simple task, you are not alone.  As perfect as so many things appear on-line, reality can get really annoying and frustrating.

My daughter and her friend recently wanted to go “Thrifting” –the treasure hunt to see if they could find something really cool for a low price at a thrift store.  (They were successful!) I was happy to take them. While at the thrift store, I decided to look for pants to wear to work. I of course understand the importance of pants, but it is hard to be inspired to pay a lot for a pair.  Certainly, I think we have all felt great about money we have spent on a great shirt, fabulous dress, amazing jacket, or even a pair of jeans which makes our back side look GREAT, but it is hard to get really excited about spending a lot on trousers to wear to the office.  I was very happy to find several pair which fit very well with the exception of length.

I had heard of iron-on adhesive which could be used to hem clothes.  Sure, I could have gone to a tailor, but for what I paid for the pants, the cost of the tailor would be more than what I would lose if I ruined the pants by trying to hem them myself.  I found “Super Weight Heat-n-Bond” at a local store. (The main reason I chose “Super Weight” as opposed to “Regular” was that one was available and one wasn’t. It made that decision making much easier.)  

Once I was able to determine how much I wanted to shorten the legs of the new pants, I was ready to start the bonding process.  The instructions seemed simple enough. I was just concerned that my hem might be uneven or not quite the length I originally planned.  Well, that turned out not to be my problem. I put the bonding tape inside the hem as directed and placed the iron down on the fabric. The instructions read, “Place and hold iron on the fabric for 3 seconds.  Repeat until entire surface is bonded.”  (The bold font of 3 seconds is how it was written in the instructions.  I did not place that emphasis myself.) Seemed simple enough.  Well, after I don’t know how many minutes, I still did not have good bond.  I thought that maybe since I had just started using the roll that perhaps the first part wasn’t quite right.  I took that piece of the bonding tape out of the hem, placed a new piece, and then put the iron back down on the fabric.  I next wondered what the sticky stuff was that started to appear on the hem. Apparently I wasn’t very careful about putting down the original piece of tape because I managed to accidentally get it to touch the iron.  Guess what? It bonded REALLY WELL to the face of the iron! (The photo does not quite do it justice.) That certainly put a screeching halt to my already frustrating task. Aarghh!

I looked up ways to clean the face of an iron.  I tried to convince myself to count this as a continuation of my “living and learning” process.  The baking soda-water paste may work for some types of cleaning but did squat in terms of removing the bonded iron-on adhesive.  Now that my brain was hurting from frustration, my husband used common sense and checked the product website. He found instructions on how to remove this material from the iron.  It involved the use of fabric softener sheets. Guess what I don’t use for laundry. Now I am in a holding pattern with pants which are too long on me until I get hold of some sheets of fabric softener.  By the time I get that, I will hopefully be mentally ready to continue with this frustrating task. (The main push will likely be the fact that I really do like how the new pants look on me. They are just way too long.)  I promise to keep you posted. Fingers crossed, or, perhaps it is more appropriate to say “ankles crossed.”