Making A New Ironing Board Cover

The women of the past knew how to cover an ironing board! They didn't buy a new Teflon coated packaged deal at the local merchantile ~ no, they didn't! When the old one had "had it", they simply folded some old sheets and wrapped them around the top of the old one and pinned the new cover in place. After a lifetime of use, an ironing board was pretty heavy to carry around with all that padding, but it was wonderful full padding with nice rounding at the corners.

My Grandmother and Mother were women who did this. I could never figure out how to do it with safety pins like they used, though!



Yesterday the time came for this old ironing board to be recovered. I had inherited it from a lady in her 90's who left it in the last house we bought. May be some day I will tell you about Bea.
This has wonderful cast-iron type legs, although it takes up a lot of room due to the wide legs on the wide end of it. Take a length of fabric over the top of the board. Allow maybe 5" to hang down. Starting at the wide end, cut the sides straight, not trying to follow the contour of the board. Round off those straight angles of the corners.


Then using some twill tape, sew it to the edge of the fabric, then turned it down to form a casing. Leave the openingin the narrow end. After stitching it down, run a cord all the way around the whole cover.



Pull up the cording a bit in the round areas to form gathers. Fit it onto your board and distribute the gathers evening on the rounded parts. Tie off and tuck the ends under.



I'm not sure how to rotate this picture for you to see, but you can see there are two springy thingys that span the width underneath to keep things in place. They came with the deal!

I will say, I lined this cover with a piece of soft, but heavy fabric under it and treated both pieces as one. I thought the thin fabric would wear better.

Now pressing is a pleasure!