Ironing Board Cover and word of the day

Does your ironing board look like mine did? Yeah. I know. It was bad.  Crazy, gross bad.   

In my defense, the iron burn was from my kids trying to iron.  (Go- kids!  I only iron when I'm sewing.  Everything else (like clothes) I toss in the dryer with a spritz of water.  So, I usually only buy clothes that you can do that with.  I am not an ironing pro!) The dried on, then burned-in water mark is from accidentally tipping the iron enough that the steam water compartment spilled out.  Why didn't I just wash it?  This cover was treated (purchased that way) to be fire resistant, and it stunk to high heaven every time we ironed.  The treatment also made it so we weren't supposed to wash it, which otherwise might have helped with how horrible it looked.  (But, hey, after looking at the burn marks, don't you think the fire resistance was a good idea?)  After a while, it grated on my nerves to see it so yucky.  But I didn't want to buy another cover.  Then How Does She had a tutorial on making ironing board covers, and I thought, "What the heck?  Why not?"  and made one.  So ridiculously easy.  I thought it might be hard, but it wasn't.  Awesome. 

It went together really fast.  Like about an hour start to finish!  Awesome. 

A close up of ironing board awesomeness. 

Because remember what it used to look like??? 

 

 Yeah.  The new cover is totally awesome.  Since I used thin cotton for my new cover, I left the old one on and just put the new cover over the top.  I feel I have to try to keep some sort of fire resistance going on here for the kiddos! The nice thing is that with the cotton buffer, it doesn't stink anywhere near as much when we iron now.  Yeah!  You can find the instructions here on How Does She. Then you can have an awesome ironing board cover, too!

 

TIP:  One thing to think of when making one: you want to make sure you wash your fabric first, AND make sure you are using a fabric that is color-fast (meaning- it won't bleed).  Some reds and some heavily saturated black fabrics bleed, and the last thing you want is to turn whatever you are ironing pink or grey!  :)

 

P.S.  I seem to be overusing the word awesome today.  It must be the word of the day.  Yes, I am stuck in the 80's!  But I just can't make myself say "Sick" or "Sic" or however they spell it for something that is, well, awesome!