Making an Ironing Board Cover

If you need a new ironing board cover because yours is getting old, dirty and stained like mine, then go ahead and instead of buying a new one, make it. You're going to need something called iron quick fabric. It's available online. It's also available in fabric stores, usually comes like this. It's machine washable or you can wipe it with a damp cloth. It's a woven fabric, as you can see. This is the backside of it. And it has a reflective coating applied to the front. So it's reflective and heat resistant, which is why they use it for ironing board covers. I brought portion of my sleeve board with me today because I couldn't carry my ironing board with me on the airplane. And this is just half of the sleeve board, but it's the same concept. What you're going to do is go ahead and remove the old cover, just snip it off and take it out. And now might be a good time to replace the matting here, which is just a thick batting, Quilters Dream Deluxe Batting, I'll show you what it looks like, is an excellent option. It is a thicker batting than our regular quilt batting. It's denser and just cut a piece to, again, the size of the board and wrap it around. You're gonna want to allow a little extra and then just go ahead and if you want, you can glue it on or just let it sit. And you've got your batting there. Now take your cover and you're going to need, this is called Do-Sew. It was by a Stretch & Sew. I've had it for a few years. It's 100% spun, bonded polyester and it's very, very thin. So you can see right through the material to trace. As you can see, the fibers are just bonded together. This is meant specifically for making patterns. If you don't have that, you can use parchment paper, works very, very good. The same kind that you use for baking. Almost anything that you can make a pattern out of. You're just going to simply open up your cover, get it flat. You might have to press it and then you're gonna want to trace it. So go ahead and trace it, but add a little bit extra. Make sure you've got plenty for the casing. If you're surging the edges, this particular one is surged. You only need maybe an extra 1/2 inch. If you're going to turn under the edge 1/4 inch and then turn it again to make the casing. If that's how you prefer to do it, go ahead and allow 3/4 extra all the way around. So an extra 3/4 just like that, then cut your pattern out. You're going to sew the casing and leave an opening down here. It's hard to see, but leave an opening the wide end. I need to take this out just a moment. It's much easier to do when this is pressed, but you're casing, you're going to come along and sew like this because you're going to be threading piping all the way through. So after you've either surged it or turned it under that 1/4 inch, you're going to now sew this 1/2 inch seam to make the casing all the way around, but at the end leave it open at the wide end. Next are going to thread through cording. And basically I just get a length of cording and I just wrap it around the board. And then I allow that 12 inches on either end for tying. You're going to thread it through the casing, put it on the board and pull it tight, so that it is now snug on the board. Okay. On top of that batting. And then you just need to go ahead and tie your cording off. Your cording can be, there's lots of options, cording could be thicker like this one. There's kind of a medium cording. This one's stretchy. I don't like the stretchy as much. It just doesn't hold as well. So try and avoid that one. This is a little bit more taut. It's a little thinner cording. This is even thinner still. And then you've got this really thin cording. The thin cording, unless you make a very thin casing, is not going to work as well. So I would go with probably, this is the smallest, this is the largest, your choice. Tie it securely with a bow, trim the excess and you've got a new ironing board cover. You're all set to go. If you prefer a printed cover, you can make it the same way out of printed fabric. I would recommend leaving the iron quick underneath for the wonderful reflective qualities, but the printed fabric on top will cheery up your ironing area and brighten your sewing room.