Hey Look! I Made an Ironing Board Cover!

22 Nov

About six months ago, I purchased a brand new ironing board cover at Target. It lured me in with it’s siren song of being “scorch proof” as I can be pretty hard on ironing board covers. Unfortunately, the first time I used it, wouldn’t you know the darn thing scorched? My fabric was fine, but the ironing board cover was not.

After finishing the Lady Grey (more on that in another post!) this is the status of aforementioned ironing board cover:

Yikes!

Armed with a tutorial that I seem to have misplaced on the intewebs, I set out to make my cover. I first laid some tracing paper over the frame of my ironing board and traced the rough outline of the shape. I added 2.5″ allowance all the way around. I then serged the edges and made two buttonholes for the cording to pull through. I created the casing and threaded a length of cotton cord through. For some reason, the cord threading was a tedious process despite using a bodkin! It took over an hour. Luckily, I had a silent film saved on the DVR which helped me though (“Poor Little Rich Girl” with Mary Pickford if anyone is interested).

I used a cotton batting with a reflective surface for the padding. I doubled it as I like a nice, plush ironing board. This I cut using the traced pattern sans the extra 2.5″ allowance for the casing.  I put the cut padding on the ironing board, placed the cover on top of that and tightened the cording to make it nice and tight. In hindsight, I should have added probably an extra inch to the allowance but it does the trick. Here it is:

Ahh, much better!

Here’s a close up of the cute print. It’s a “duck” cloth that I bought at IKEA. I bought it for the little birds with aspirations to make a knitting bag with it, but this way, I’ll see it every day and it adds a nice dash of cheer to my sewing nook!

Pretty and Whimsical

Back next time with photos  and details of the finished Lady Grey!

2 Responses to “Hey Look! I Made an Ironing Board Cover!”

  1. Casey November 24, 2010 at 6:39 AM #

    Very cute! I have been needing to make another for my ironing board too–although I think I want to do polka dots or something similar! 😉

    ♥ Casey | blog

    • eileensbasement November 24, 2010 at 4:38 PM #

      Polka dots would be super cute! It was a pretty quick project, would have been less than an hour if not for the difficulty with the casing! I think the duck fabric was sort of rough and so the cotton cord was catching on it? Next time I need to make one of these I’ll use a smooth cotton.

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