Nerd Alert! Let’s talk about “pressing.”
💼I’ll never forget being corrected on my terminology during an interview for an ultra high end fashion job. I said “ironing” when I meant “pressing”. Whoops!
🪡I did not get that job. In garment manufacturing, the term pressing is used to refer to an end stage production process, generally after sewing and before packaging. The cloth is subjected to heat, pressure, and/or steam. This could come from an gravity fed or boiler fed iron, with or without a vacuum table, or from a steam tunnel or Dolly (aka puffer or steam air finish) machine. (I’m sure there are other tools I have not mentioned, shout them out in the comments below!)
👚The goal with pressing is to “sculpt” the cloth and seams of the garment into the desired shape. Wrinkle removal is a goal as well, but creases may also be intentionally added as part of the design.
📷Pictured here is my pressing station. Sometimes the flat surface of the ironing board is just what I need to press(iron) the cloth into the shape of the design, other times I need curves. Since bodies are curving structures, I use the black and white plaid “hams” while pressing seams to sculpt the cloth into the desired shape of the garment.
🤓 Often, much of the pressing is happening at the seams. Depending of the type of fabric, the design and how your production works, the garment may be pressed during the sewing process or not until after sewing is complete.