Ironing Board Cover Tutorial

I have something to confess:  I have been living with an extremely ugly ironing board cover for years now.  Allow me to demonstrate:

Part of the reason this has been going on is that, let's face it, I don't iron much.  I really, really don't.  Usually, I do my best to pull things out of the dryer in time to lay them flat and hope for the best.  And, usually, it works.  But, now that I have been getting into sewing more and more (thanks, Pinterest!), I find that the ironing board has been making more of an appearance at our house.  An awful, awful appearance.

So, you want to see how I did it?  Spoiler: there's not much to it.  All you will need is about a yard of fabric, and batting if you need new cushioning.

Let's get going!  Remove that nasty old thing and take the string out of the casing.  Also, remove your padding if you want to replace that, too.  Save all of these pieces.  As you have probably guessed, you'll be using these pieces as your patterns.  Lay your padding piece out on top of the batting and cut it out.  I use the term "padding" loosely, because in my case it was more like foam tissue paper.

 Since I have been under-cushioned for so long, I doubled up the batting for extra plushness.

If your fabric isn't as long as your ironing board, you will need to do a little bit of piecing.  I actually ended up having to piece twice, since my fabric was just under a yard.  Cut your fabric in half lengthwise, then straight stitch along the shortest side to get one long piece of fabric.

 Since your ironing board is out of commission, just grab some bath towels to iron on for a little bit.  Press your seam open to reduce bulkiness.

 Now you are ready to cut out the pattern.  Pin the old cover down in a few places and draw around it, leaving about an inch for seam allowances for the string casing.

 I just grabbed a sharpie and traced around it.

 After it is cut out, fold the edges down and iron a 1/4" seam all the way around.  Fold it over again, this time 1/2", and iron again or just pin.  Leave a one inch opening to put the string in.  You will have to do some trickery around the curves, pleating here and there and pinning in place.  It doesn't really matter how it looks, because you won't be able to see it.

Starting at the back end, sew all the way around with a 1/8" seam, making sure to leave that one inch gap I talked about earlier.

 Once you are done, you can iron the casing down, but it will just get messed up again on the next step, so I'd skip it.  Tie your string to a safety pin and thread it through, all the way around to the other side.  This part was the worst.  My hands started cramping so bad!

Once your string is through, sandwich everything back together, cinch it up and tie it off.  You are ready to iron in style!

Once I paint my laundry room purple, this will match perfectly!

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