Ironing Board

A few years ago I decided to design and make my own ironing board cover, after struggling with ill fitting commercially sold ones, that were always made with substandard (read crappy) fabric ones. The commercial padding was never good enough, mostly too thin, not wide/long enough for my STANDARD sized ironing board. I even made a tutorial of sorts on another blog and after looking back, realising that it's now been 4 years and that ironing board cover is still going strong I thought I would rejig it for here.



Started off with the issue of not having enough padding, I already had a piece of old woollen blanket but needed more. Used an old damaged mattress protector that was laying around. Really disliked the way that the old padding constantly moved around at the pointy end of the board, so I made a deep pocket for that end.



Traced and cut out leaving enough excess to cover board edges and underneath.



Stitch and turn right side out. It needs to be a fairly firm fit, I first sewed on the pinned marks, then added another row of stitching a little further in to tighten the fit.



Used elastic to bind edges, remembering to pull elastic firm while stitching to elasticate the edge. Photo shows cover being sewn but same technique was used on padding. Fitted sheet elastic works well, it folds over the edge.


Decided that it needed more padding so added a piece of old woollen blanket and stitched it to the frame to prevent movement.




At the corners added elastic straps to ensure the cover stayed in place



Completed





The fabric cover was completed in the same way, the photos below show the old foam padding being used as a template.







Just read my notes, mentioned that the elastic was too loose on the cover, the corners weren't tight enough. Apparently I was going to change it out for a casing and drawstring, but until I did that I just safety pinned it in place. Ummm the safety pins are still there.



Ribbon was added as support ties where needed.






Just about every stage of the making of this was overseen by the cat, who has claimed the ironing board as her throne, laying claim to each of the stages in the name of Catdom. To this day if the ironing board is up she makes a running leap on to it and spreads herself all over it. We get the dirtiest of looks when we remove her and all the cat hairs so we can use it. As soon as we move away she's up there, rubbing herself all over it to show us that it is hers.



I liked how cheap this was to make, the only thing new used was the fabric, it was only a couple of dollars per metre. I had already purchased a new protector for only $10, which is still really cheap if you have to buy one for the project.