Ironing Guide - Should You Iron Every Step? (Yes, Here's Why)

Look, I'm not proud of this. For the first 40 hours of Dressmaker, I treated the iron like it was decorative furniture in my shop. You know, one of those buttons you click once to see what it does, shrug, and never touch again? Yeah. That was me. "Ironing is optional," I told myself. "The game literally says optional. Why would I waste time on optional?"

I was so, so wrong. And if you're here because you skipped ironing on a commission and got a worse star rating than you expected — welcome to the club. We have matching t-shirts. They're wrinkled. Because I didn't iron them. 😤

Let me walk you through everything I learned the hard way about ironing in this game, so you don't have to lose a 4-star commission to a 3-star one like I did.

Why ironing actually matters (the numbers)

So here's the deal. Ironing is technically optional — the game lets you skip it entirely and move on. But "optional" in Dressmaker is doing a LOT of heavy lifting. Skipping ironing doesn't just mean you miss out on a small bonus. Your quality score takes a real, noticeable hit.

From what I've measured across maybe 30-40 commissions now (I started keeping a spreadsheet after my disaster, more on that below), ironing adds somewhere between +3 and +6 points to your final quality score, depending on the fabric and how wrinkled it got during sewing.

That doesn't sound like much until you realize the gap between 4 stars and 5 stars can be as little as 2-3 points. Same for the gap between 3 and 4. So when you skip ironing, you're not losing "+5 points out of 100" — you're potentially losing an entire star rating. The whole star. Gone. Poof. 💨

I cannot stress this enough: there is no other mechanic in the game that lets you recover those points. You can't "sew better" to compensate. You can't pick a fancier fabric to make up for it. The iron is the only way to get those quality points back, full stop.

When to iron: every step vs. once at the end

This is the part people actually argue about. Do you iron after every single step, or do you iron once at the very end and call it a day?

I tested both. Here's what I found:

Why does ironing every step win? Wrinkles don't compound, and each fabric gets pressed while it's still the top layer and accessible. When you iron only at the end, by the time you get to it, the bottom layers have been squished under three other fabrics for the whole sewing phase, and the press can't fully reach them. Also? Some wrinkles "set" if you leave them too long. The game won't tell you this — I figured it out by squinting at my quality numbers for two hours like a gremlin. 🦉

So yes, ironing every step is better. Not by a huge margin, but enough to matter on tight commissions. If you're doing something easy like a Garden Party Gown, ironing once at the end is probably fine. If you're going for 5 stars on Crowning Glory? Iron every step. Don't be me.

The time I turned 4 stars into 3

Okay, here's the story that made me write this guide. I was doing a commission — won't name it, but it was a mid-tier formal gown, mostly Linen Beige with some Lace Cream. I had the fabrics right. I had the proportions right. I'd done this commission twice before and gotten 4 stars both times. This time I wanted 5.

But it was late. Like, "should have gone to bed an hour ago" late. And I was annoyed because ironing takes like 15-20 in-game minutes per step, and I had four steps left. So I did the math in my head: "Eh, I'll skip the ironing, save the time, I've got plenty of quality buffer."

Reader. I did not have plenty of quality buffer. 😭

The commission came back 3 stars. THREE. I went from a comfortable 4-star to a 3-star because I skipped ironing on a Linen Beige heavy build. I stared at the screen for a full minute. Then I closed the game. Then I opened it again because I hadn't saved in like an hour. Pain. Pure pain.

That's when I started my spreadsheet. I needed to know exactly how much ironing was worth, fabric by fabric, so I'd never make that call on vibes again.

Fabrics that punish you for skipping the iron

Here's my ranked list of "fabrics that will absolutely wreck your quality if you skip the iron," based on my spreadsheet data:

So if you're working with linen, cotton, chiffon, tulle, or lace — iron. Every. Step. I'm begging you. 🙏

Fabrics you can kind of get away with skipping

And here's the part that made me feel slightly less dumb about my earlier neglect. Some fabrics barely wrinkle at all, and skipping the iron on them isn't catastrophic.

So if you're working with a silk or satin build, ironing is more of a "nice to have." If you're working with linen or cotton? Iron. Every. Step. I'm saying it twice because I clearly needed to hear it twice.

Is the time cost actually worth it?

Let's talk numbers, because I know some of you are here for the Speed Tailor math. ⏱️

Each ironing session takes about 15-20 in-game minutes. If you iron after every step on a 5-step commission, that's 75-100 minutes of in-game time. For Speed Tailor (finish a commission in one in-game day), that's a real chunk of your day budget.

Here's how I think about it now:

• If the commission has a hard quality requirement (95+) for 5 stars — iron every step. No exceptions. The math works out: 75 extra minutes is way cheaper than failing and redoing the whole thing. Redoing costs you in-game days AND fabric money.
• If you're going for Speed Tailor — use silk-heavy builds and skip ironing. You can hit 5 stars on a silk commission without the iron, and you save the time for actually sewing. Check my Speed Tailor guide for the exact builds that work.
• If it's a chill commission with no achievement on the line and you're using linen/cotton — still iron. Sorry. The wrinkles are real and the quality hit is real.

The big shift for me was realizing that ironing isn't "wasted time" — it's insurance. The 15 minutes you spend on the iron is buying you 2-3 quality points you cannot get back any other way. Skipping it to save 15 minutes, then losing a star and having to redo the entire commission (which takes another full in-game day, plus fabric costs, plus my dignity) — that math does not work.

For reference, the commission I botched? Cost me about 480 gold in Linen Beige and Lace Cream to redo. Plus a whole in-game day. Plus my pride. The iron would've cost me 15 in-game minutes. You do the math. I did, finally. 📉

Mistakes I see everyone make (I made all of them)

After haunting the Steam forums and the Discord for a few weeks, here are the mistakes I see over and over:

My big shift (from ironing hater to iron convert)

I want to be honest here. For the first chunk of my playthrough, I genuinely thought ironing was a pointless mechanic that the devs put in for "immersion" or whatever. I'd watch the little ironing animation, roll my eyes, and click skip. I was so smug about it. "I'm efficient," I thought. "I don't need hand-holding mechanics." 😤

Then the 3-star disaster happened. Then I made the spreadsheet. Then I started noticing the little quality differences — the +3 here, the +5 there — and suddenly the iron wasn't "decorative furniture." It was a tool. A boring, unsexy, genuinely-important tool.

Now I iron every step. Every single one. Yes, even on silk builds. Yes, even when I'm tired. Because the one time I didn't, I lost a star, and I'm still salty about it. Ask my friends. They're tired of hearing about it. 🧂

The funny thing is, once I accepted that ironing was part of my workflow, it stopped feeling like a chore. It's like a little breather between sewing steps. I get to look at my fabric, press it flat, admire my work, and move on. There's something kind of meditative about it once you stop fighting it. The little hiss of the iron, the fabric smoothing out under it... okay, I'm starting to sound like a cozy game ad, but you get the point. It's not the worst way to spend 15 in-game minutes.

Final thoughts

If you take one thing from this guide, let it be this: ironing is optional the way "checking your seam allowance" is optional. You can skip it. The game lets you. And then your quality suffers and you don't understand why and you blame the fabric or the proportions and you redo the commission three times before you figure it out.

Don't be me. Iron every step. Especially on linen. 🧵✨

If you want to see exactly how much ironing will affect a specific commission before you sew a single stitch, plug your fabrics into our fabric calculator — it factors in the ironing bonus so there are no surprises when the star rating drops.

Good luck out there, fellow tailor. And press those seams. 👔