ironing board cover material
 

I recently moved a 68" x 18" dresser into my quilt room where the ironing board used to stand, and I'm in the process of making it into an ironing/pressing station. I started with a piece of 3/4" plywood that's 72" x 20", and I wrapped it in two layers of Warm & White batting. Now I need to add a cover. I plan to make it like a pillowcase that fits tightly over the board and batting, so the board can be flipped over if one side gets dirty, and the cover can be removed to be washed if necessary.

My options for fabric for the ironing board cover are cotton duck/canvas (left over from when I made leaders for my longarm) or bleached or unbleached muslin. The cotton duck would be sturdier, but it could be harder to get a good fit. I'd like to use whichever would make the better ironing surface. I don't know which that would be, but I'm leaning toward the cotton duck.

Any recommendations based on your experience? I guess I could make one side out of the cotton duck and the other side from muslin...

My big ironing boards have one layer of batting then canvas which I stretched.
I followed Sharon Schamber's "perfect pressing board" on Youtube.
I started with a small one like hers then applied the same idea to my big
boards. Then I made separate covers with canvas and sewed canvas
ribbons(?) middle and ends to tie them underneath. Easy to remove and wash.
If you make two covers then you always have one on your ironing board
while the other one is in the wash. I use a lot of starch so my covers
get washed quite often.

I have cotton duck on my homemade ironing surface, and I really like it. I wrapped it taut over layers of batting and insul-bright and stapled it on the back. When it needs to be replaced, I cut it off, re-wrap, and staple.
The cotton duck is nice because it sort of grabs and hangs on to my blocks/fabrics, whereas the silver stuff is super slippery. Something to consider.

Sorry, I used twill tape for the ties. What was I thinking when I posted this.<sigh>

Whatever fabric you use, wash it and put it wet on the board or table top. It will shrink as it dries to fit smooth. I learned some years ago not to dry the cover in the dryer and then try to put it on. I use duck canvas because I bought a bolt of 25 yards flower print at a yard sale about ten years ago and still using from it for ironing covers and mats.

I used white cotton broad cloth - like a super heavy ved sheet

My portable ironing surface has silver cloth over batting stapled to a piece of plywood and I've never regretted my choices....

Just remember that Duck Cloth shrinks A LOT!

I have a 48x24 plywood covered with batting and cotton duck. It sits on my ironing board. I can remove it when I want to iron my blouses (old fashion, I like ironed clothes).

Mine is stapled on and so I have to remove it to put on new fabric when needed.

I went with the duck/canvas striped fabric the first time and it did get dirty back when I used spray starch. I no longer use spray starch now. I found some of the heat resistant silver fabric in my stash so that's what I use now but I stapled it on the underside so no two sides to flip over. Luckily I had this fabric on my pressing station when my old $1 iron caught fire as a couple of flares dropped onto the silver fabric and only put a hole into the fabric and didn't continue burning anything else in it's path. I was also lucky that it happened while I was there and not away from the pressing station as it could have been a worse case scenario for me. I had left the iron on for a couple days as it was one of those that didn't turn off automatically. But boy could it press out the wrinkles. But since then as I tend to forget to turn things off when I'm going back and forth between the cutting table, sewing machine and pressing station, I now have an iron that will turn off automatically if left alone for too long.

The silver fabric doesn't seem to get as dirty as regular fabric does. And even though I have a couple tiny burn holes in mine now after that fiasco, I can still use it.