New Addition to the Sewing Room

This is the iron I used for 10+ years. It has been a good iron. However lately when the iron heats up and the steam button is pushed discolored water leaks from the iron. There really should be no water coming from the iron because the water is in the base unit. Fortunately I have not damaged any fabric yet.

When cleaning out the base unit a plastic screw type item fell out. Not sure of its function. Some other peculiar things were happening with the iron. I decided that I would look for a new iron.

Because I had use the Rowenta iron with good success I began to look at new Rowenta irons. Yet I learned that they were being manufactured elsewhere and that experience with the newer models was not satisfactory. I happened upon Oonaballoona's sewing blog and her post about a Maytag iron.

After reading the blog post I began to do my own research and found that this was a reasonably priced iron, much less than what I paid for the Rowenta over 10 years ago, and that the features were very likable. I then researched where I could buy the iron hoping that I could buy it from a local retailer. I found that I could purchase it from J C Penney but it would have to be ordered online. Of course there was Amazon also. I knew that I could get the iron quicker from Amazon than J C Penney based upon previous shipping experience.

So my new iron arrived earlier this month and for the past couple of days have been able to use it quite frequently. I like how it functions and the feel of it.  The steam feature is good, almost as good as my old Rowenta when it was new.  It is fairly light weight and the ease of filling the water tank is a nice feature given that the Rowenta held a lot of water in the base unit.  I think it was a good purchase for the price and the two year warranty.  Let's hope it last longer than that.

New Iron

Above is the iron I purchased back in 2005 or 2006 at the National ASG conference in DC. What sold me on this iron was that there would not be water leaks. However recently I had two instances where when I pressed the lever for the steam water did spew, thankfully onto the pressing cloth. The leakage was a yellow/red color.

The thermostat still seems to function appropriately. I try to keep the sole plate cleaned and ever so often you are to empty the tank fully and rinse a few times. Recently when I did that a plastic looking screw fell out of the tank and broke apart. I am not sure what its purpose was and so far the iron is still working.

I am not able to purchase an expensive gravity feed iron, though I would love one; getting eight or nine years out of this iron thus far leads me to consider purchasing another similar iron. There are some other Rowenta irons that I have seen; I have not checked any reviews about those.

I would appreciate feedback or suggestions about good irons that you have used. Feel free to leave a comment on this post.