Thursday, January 03, 2008

Help me pick a garment steamer

For a while now, I've wanted to buy a steamer for my sewing studio. It got some cash for Christmas, so now is the perfect opportunity to treat myself. I noticed in the recent Hancock Fabrics ad that they had the Homemedics Commercial Steamer on sale for $49.99 - thinking the word "commercial" equals quality, I stopped by and picked one up. Well today I finally took it out of the box and I'm less than impressed. It seems like it should be sturdier than it is, so I started snooping around PR and the net and found some other steamers that are probably a better investment than the one I purchased. I steamed the cuffs of my McCalls puffy sleeve blouse and it worked pretty good, but I have no experience with a steamer, so I don't know if it actually did a good job or not.

So give me your opinion - do you have a steamer? If so, which one? Do you have the one I purchased? If so, do you like it? I am now thinking of returning the steamer (the lady at Hancock's told me I had 60 days to decide if I didn't like it) and buying the Jiffy J-2000 from Costco, but they also have another one on the Costco website too called SteamFast Professional Steamer. They both are close in price so it's not at all about the price, it's about the quality. I want something that I will have for the long haul. I'm not even sure how often I'll use it, but it makes no sense to buy a piece of junk for $50 that I'm going to have to replace.

Looking forward to hearing some opinions on the issue, so please don't be shy!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi Melissa,
I have a Jiffy steamer that I bought many years ago. It's used by the pros. I worked at a wardrobe house in LA that used them in their business and I bought it from them. Good luck.
Leslee from Fort Worth