depends on what you mean by "saw him" but if its the same job i'm thinking of, i'm pretty sure it was just a regular hand bender. @averywright and i have gone back and forth on this before though. honestly who cares which one he used, the bends looked fine either way. people get way too caught up in the tool vs the result around here.

wait, i thought steaming was supposed to relax fibers, not shrink them. are you sure it was steam and not something else? in my experience, rayon is a finicky fabric that can shrink from heat and moisture, so that might be why it worked. i've had better luck with a fabric glue stick on the inside of the shoulder seam, just a little dab to give it some grip. your mileage may vary, but it's worth a shot if steaming doesn't do the trick every time.

You know, it's funny you bring up the QWERTY thing because I've been down a rabbit hole about old ink formulas lately. There was this early 20th century printer's ink that had arsenic in it for color, and when you handled the type long enough it would get into your skin. I keep thinking about that for a story where knowledge is literally poisonous to touch. The pages look beautiful but after twenty minutes your hands start to tingle. It makes me wonder how many other everyday objects from history had these hidden dangers nobody talked about.