I’m a marketer’s ‘dream consumer’. Put it in a attractive bottle, give me a good reason to buy it, tell me it’ll make my sewing a whole lot better and there’s a good chance I’ll buy it!
It wasn’t long before I discovered starch sprays and Best Press is my favourite. When I saw that they had a Christmas version ( see the Frankincense & Myrrh bottle above), hey, I even purchased that. Despite it making me splutter a little whenever I spray it ( maybe THAT’S why it was on offer!) I’ll still use up the bottle as I don’t like waste and I’m always looking for ways of making my money stretch and being environmentally conscious wherever possible. As you can see, my bottles are nearly empty and I thought I’d do a search about making your own. I know I’d heard whispers at shows of people using vodka, but was this just an excuse for daytime drinking?!
After I’d read a fair few articles, I decided to give the heated cornflour and water version a try. The ingredients were so humble and cheap, it didn’t matter if the results weren’t perfect. As I wanted to use Essential Oil to give a little fragrance, I opted for a darker plastic bottle and tried to ignore the fact that the bottle had just cost more than a new bottle of Best Press.
Mix 2 1/4 cups of water with 1 1/2 tbsp of cornflour/cornstarch ensuring no lumps, bring to the boil and boil for 1 minute. It had the consistency of a lightly thickened sauce which perturbed me a little. I kept whisking and left it to cool a little. I came back to some gelatinous lumps; those WEREN’T in the recipe!! I decided the mix was a little too thick so added another cup of water and 2 drops of Lavender oil. After straining through a sieve It now looked like this.
There was enough mix left to add to one of my leftover cleaned out Best Press bottles ( good job- as you’ll soon find out).
In order to be a little scientific, I got two identical pieces of cotton and tried spraying them on my mat. I wanted to get a very similar saturation level.
The issue was that the not-so-cheap bottle was horrendous at spraying finely.
So I decided to use the solution in the old bottle so it really was a fairer test. I ironed it and the over-saturated bit clumped with little white flecks, but the bottom ends using the different products but in identical spray bottle looked very similar.
The top piece is the Best Press and the bottom is the DIY starch. Results? Very similar. The DIY was actually a tad more starched but not unhelpfully so. The Best Press piece retained more of a lavender aroma but I guess I could add another drop of essential oil if that was important. The next test will be longevity. Will the spray go off because it has cornflour it? Time will tell. For the sake of a few pence worth of cornflour and lavender oil, I have a really good solution, that even if I remade every month, I will have saved myself a fortune plus I know exactly what is in my spray. Will I ever buy Best Press again? Possibly- I’m sure I’ll be suckered in with a new fragrance, but the homemade version is here to stay, and I can now buy more fabric with all the pennies I’ve saved!!
I’ll leave you with a shot of my lovely starched pieces all ready for sewing ( even if these do end up as Leaders and Enders!!) and I look forward to being with you again soon!
Keren Baker x
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