Ok, I have a question. I posted earlier about my board, it is a corrugated metal shelf that I have covered with terry towels, warm and natural and wool. Now the wool give great grip and the terry and the w&n give great padding, not to high and very firm as after about a month, the amount of pressing and heat has made it settle. I like the steam to go all the way through the board, but I see everyone here is using MDF or some other kind of wood as their base. Last I looked, steam does not go through wood. Here is my question, are you not concerned about the steam build up and the warping of the wood with the steam? MDF and other chipboard products are held together with hot glue of sorts. I use a steam generator that gets extremely hot and produces a lot of steam. I would be afraid that would damage the board and the fabric would hold the moisture.. what am I not seeing here??

I too will suggest that you do not use poly batting, it will melt, cause problems.
You could use your old padding from your old ironning board cover plus a couple of
layers of cotton batting or insulbright. I have made my ironning board cover and I love it cause I made it.

Thanks for all the information, everyone.

A hard surface is much better to press quilt blocks and pieces if you press or starch a lot. If the fabric sinks in the board just a little, it will distort the fabric that you won't notice but piece after piece or repeated pressing and all of a sudden nothing seems to match just right. I have plywood, one layer of Warm and Natural and then cotton fabric. On my small ironing board, I used duck canvas, wet it and let it dry on the board- super taut.

Although I'm not really answering your question, I really like covering my ironing board with a large piece of fabric which is held in place with large binder clips and large quilting safety pins. It's pretty easy to remove and throw in the washer when there's too much starch and too many steam marks on it. I rarely have to iron clothes anymore so the clips really aren't an issue.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]303167[/ATTACH] I used 2 layers of batting on the big wooden board and 1 layeron my small board. works great.

I have a quilting ironing board over my regular ironing board. The quilting ironing board - top rectangular piece of 1/2" plywood is 22" x 60", has a frame on the bottom side of the quilting ironing tabletop, and has 4 fasteners attached to that frame. .
The rectangular ironing board that fits on top of my regular ironing board, has 4 fastener made with of 1" x 3" pieces of wood, that is fastened loosely onto a screw, so can be turned and used as a fastener to
steady the quilting ironing tabletop (Ironing Board) which is fastened to the ironing board underneath, and these pieces of wood are very secure onto the regular bottom ironing board.

I can lift off the quilting ironing board with no difficulty and I just stand it on end between my shelving units. So on Laundry days can iron our clothes and put the quilting ironing board back on when I'm working on quilts. Also gives me more counter in my sewing room.....

The cover is layered as follows: top - silver grey self padded fabric ( like thinsolate) (this layer will be tacked all around with staples using a staple gun on the bottom side of this quilt ironing board over all the layers - mitering the corners.
2nd layer is: batting just to cover the top - do not wrap around
3rd layer is: polyester low loft sheet of fibrefil - wrap this over the edges
4th layer is: piece of felt to cover the top area as well

Or go into your linen closet and pull out those old sheets you never use!

Personally when I made mine I used cotton batting and muslin on a thumb tack board from an cubical divider. I only had to wrap it once. Mine is 60in long and only about 12-15 wide. Katrina

I went to JoAnn and bought ironing board cover fabric off the bolt. Wash it to preshrink before measuring and putting in your "channel" for you drawstring. That way, once you spill coffee on it you can pop it in the washer!