My ironing board is old. Thats probably because i inherited it from an elderly lady. The cover was in sad shape. So I figured I would replace it. Went shopping around but cringed at the $30 price tags. Figured for that price, I could try to make my own.

I had some old (10 yr old) fabric that was a heavier canvas type fabric and had no plans for it. I only had a yard so it wouldn't cover the whole board. I laid the fabric on the board and started trimming. Leaving about 4" all the way around. I took some of the larger leftovers and used it to cover the section of the board not covered by turning the stripes horizontal instead of vertical. After sewing the two pieces of fabric together and doing hospital corners on the ends and pinning, I sewed a seam all the way around. Then i sewed over the top of my hospital corners to give them stability. Then I took some elastic and sewed that along my seam.

That worked but it wasn't as tight as I wanted. I had leftover elastic and decided to sew it to the bottom to pull the cover tighter. I found three spots that wouldn't interfere with slipping the cover on and sewed on three more pieces of elastic.

I tried it on again and only the middle wasn't as tight as I'd like, so I took a piece of elastic and used safety pins to pin a spot in the middle that couldn't be sewn on. It turned out pretty darn good considering that I didn't have a clue to what I was doing.

Took me maybe 30 minutes to whip it up. Definately worth the time and much cheaper than the store bought ones. I spent $3 for the elastic.

Great job - making something work! It looks good.

I didn't want to lose all of that lovely storage you lose with a normal ironing board so I made a board to sit on two of the larger Sterilite cabinets. 8 drawers to fill with fabric. YIPPEE!!

Looks great to me!

I have one of those old wooden ironing boards...I sometimes will use it for display at craft shows, so don't want something that needs to stay in place. I have one of those portable ironing blankets that I safety pinned so it fits right.

You did a great job on yours!

And it is lovely. Love the opposing stripes.

Looks good!

great job

Great job, looks great

You did a very nice job. Looks very nice. Looks like a good sturdy cover too. It feels good doesn't it to make something so usable again.