Ironing Board Covers!

Ms. Distraction spilled the beans yesterday: we made ironing board covers! I know, very exciting, but if your cover sucks, a lousy job* is so much worse. Ironing is so much more fun with cherries (or gin).

A few weeks ago, Stef sent me a link to an ironing board cover tutorial on Marmadaisy (a blog to which I am now addicted, thanks!) and we decided it would be fun project to do together.

Here is the old cover for my larger board. At some point it got stained with what looks like Kool-Aid. It's laid out on Stef's board, but it doesn't fit mine either. Stef and her husband have dubious taste, and think the fabric is wonderful. I think it is stupid.

This is the old cover for my smaller board, which I use while sewing. It is very dirty. And boring.

Both boards came with lousy padding, so I made new ones out of cotton batting.

I used pinking shears to cut them out, rather than finishing in a more labor intensive way (like zig-zagging and trimming).

And here are my much more cheerful ironing boards:

We had a great time and the only swearing on my part had to with sewing machine mishaps. It turns out, using someone else's (much better) machine is a lot like driving someone else's car -- you can't figure out how to turn on the lights and reverse is more mysterious. Also, you might decide you need a new car and/or sewing machine.

*Fairly soon after we moved in together, a friend of Len's died. I overheard him talking to another friend about what he would wear to the funeral: "I have some khakis and a shirt, but they need to be ironed... No, I wouldn't be with a woman who has an iron." Hahaha!! I always forgets that he moved in with a girl.