Hey Everyone, welcome back to Cool Tool Thursday.

My iron has never been such a mess. I am always so careful to use pressing cloths and Teflon sheets for applique and other fusible products to keep all that nasty glue and gunk off my iron. Well, I was making a memory quilt last week and I didn’t use a pressing sheet to apply the fusible interfacing.

The results of not using a pressing sheet look like this.

Very dirty iron plate

What a mess!!

Not good to say the least. Never again will I skip using the pressing sheet.

Now to get it clean. To begin I had to go out and purchase some iron cleaner which I did at my LQS, Thimbles & Things in Orillia, Ontario.

There were 2 cleaners to choose from and I chose Iron-Off Hot Iron Cleaner from Dritz as Sue assured me that this cleaner would get my iron clean.

iron-off hot iron cleaner from Dritz

Tube of Dritz iron-off hot iron cleaner

The other cleaner was a new product and was 3 times the price of the Dritz cleaner. From the picture it looked like it used a white foam like the Mr Clean magic eraser to clean the iron. I bought a Mr Clean magic eraser as well – it didn’t do a thing to clean the iron. I have used it with great success on many other things at the cottage but no success with the iron.

I was really hoping not to have to use the smelly stuff. I headed outside to my front porch and plugged in the iron after gathering my tools. The tube of iron-off, old towels and some Q-tips.

The instructions which by the way are found on the back of the packaging recommend squeezing the cleaner onto the towel.

Instructions on back of package and cleaner on the towel

Cleaner on towel and instructions

Then running the iron over the cleaner in a circular motion. This worked slightly but not a huge effect. Along with not smelling so nice it also smokes – definitely do this operation in a well ventilated area – preferably outdoors.

Iron ready to run over cleaner on towel

Run iron over cleaner

If the first time didn’t get it clean the instructions say to use a second application. It definitely was not clean. For the second application I squirted the cleaner right onto the iron as Sue recommended when I bought the product.

Melting and smoking cleaner on iron

Cleaner applied directly to iron

Putting the cleaner directly on the iron surface worked much better but I still had to do many more applications and scrape with a Pampered Chef Teflon scraper from my kitchen. Yes, I had done a really good number on my iron.

I think I used almost the full tube of iron-off and half a box of Q-tips but it worked – thank goodness as I didn’t want to buy a new iron. Good as new – well not quite but almost.

A clean iron surface with the tools used surrounding the iron

Good as new

After putting a couple containers of water through on steam to make sure I cleaned out all the cleaner the iron is ready to go.

I actually didn’t think my iron would ever be clean again so I am impressed that this product did the job. So if you ever need to clean your iron the Dritz Iron-Off Hot Surface Cleaner works like a charm.

Happy Quilting!

Jen Transparent Signature

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