Ironing Board Cover

Remember how when I dyed my wedding dress, some of the dye rubbed off?  With all that blessed ironing I had to do on it, both my iron and my ironing board ended up blue!

I was sick of my cheapo iron anyways, so I relegated it to be more of craft iron than garment iron.  I threw the ironing board cover in the wash.  The dye actually came completely out.  But my cover shrunk so much that I couldn't get it on the board anymore!

Which means I got to do a project!

I know you haven't seen it yet, but in my craft room all the accessories are "Bonnie Pink", so of course I needed a Bonnie Pink ironing board cover!

I dug around and found a large piece of quilting fabric that was perfect!  If you're buying it new, you need about 1.75 yards of cotton.  I also found some leftover batting and cording I had bought for my failed attempt at making roman shades (you'll need 4 yards of cord).

I washed the fabric before doing anything else - I didn't need another one shrinking up on me!  Because I didn't have an ironing board cover, I couldn't iron the fabric first, but this project doesn't require perfection so it wasn't a big deal.  Remember that - perfection is not required!!!!

I laid out the fabric and tried to get it relatively smooth.

Then I laid the batting over the fabric and smoothed everything out.  Our foster kitten told me that it was wide enough to double up, so I did that, too!  (She showed up during a storm a week ago, and is going to her forever home soon!)

I laid the ironing board on top of everything and outlined it with a Sharpie so I'd know how big to make everything.  I pinned all the layers together to keep stuff from shifting.

Then I sewed the layers together, making it so my stitching would end up on the side of the ironing board (it's hard to iron stuff flat if there are lumpy stitches underneath).  Then I trimmed off the excess batting.

I cut the extra fabric off about 2.5" from the edge of the ironing board.  Looking back, I wish I had done 3.5" or maybe even 4".

I sewed the excess into a pocket for the cord to go in.

I forgot to leave a slit so I just cut one instead.  Then I threaded my cord through the pocket using a safety pin attached to the end as a guide.

And that was it!  I put it on the board and tightened the cord! (yay that rhymes)

But... it wasn't a tight as I had hoped.  The ends were fine, but the middle was just eh.

To fix that, I used some scrap fabric and made two sets of ties.  I sewed them to the edges of the cover.  Once the cover was back on the board, I tied the new ties - much better!  Now everything is staying in place.

All in all, this project took about 1.5 hours, and cost $0 since I had all the materials!  The new ironing board looks spiffy with my craft room!  Now I can also get around to all those projects where ironing stuff is a crucial step :)

Bonnie Projects