I have to admit that I have a high tolerance for mess, but this week I reached my limit with my truly revolting ironing board cover.  As I was making a new one, and since someone on Instagram asked about it, I thought I’d pull together a wee tutorial for you, so here goes.  It’s not prescriptive in its dimensions because ironing boards come in so many shapes and sizes, and only you know what yours is like:

You will need:

• 1 grotty ironing board cover to use as a template
• Enough fabric to cover the existing board plus a seam allowance – my board isn’t huge and I ended up using a little less than the width of some home decor weight fabric (52″ wide) I got 2 covers out of 1 yd/m of fabric
• 1″ wide twill tape for the casing – how much you need is entirely dependent on the size of your board, but I used about 3 yds/m for 1 board – to measure yours, measure all the way around your existing cover then all a couple of inches for luck/ foldover
• Blind cord for the draw strings – you will need about 1/4 yd/m more than the amount of casing you needed
• A bodkin or large safety pin
• Tracing tools – I used a Prym Parallel Tracing Wheel.  I can’t remember where I got mine, but the best local price I could find was Jaycotts at £8.49 here.  You could also use a marking pen or chaco liner and rulers

To make the cover:

Take your old grotty cover and place right sides together with your fabric, then taking your tracing tools and draw round the old cover, leaving a 1/4″ seam allowance:

Cut out the board cover from your new fabric, then pin the tape for the casing right sides together all the way around the edge, starting and ending in the middle of the short flat end:

Fold the ends over by around 1/2″ to the outside, then sew all the way around with the 1/4″ seam allowance:

Fold the casing to the back of the cover, pin in place and press – I didn’t bother clipping my curves as the whole thing gets scrunched up at the edges anyway.  Zigzag stitch all the way around the edge – if your machine has no zigzag option, then straight stitch around 1/8″ from the edge.

Take your bodkin/safety pin and attach to one end of your cord, then thread it all the way around through the casing:

Put your cover on your board, then pull the strings tight and tie them in a bow and tuck the ends up under the casing.

Step back and consider how long you will tolerate the grot on this one before making another one (hint, I made 2 at the same time as the fabric amount I had on hand made it easy to fold the fabric in half and measure and cut that way, so I already have a spare :oD )