Sunday 8 January 2012

Pressa's new cover

One of my new year's resolutions was to make a new cover for my little table-top ironing board. This is Pressa. Pressa came from IKEA well over fourteen years ago ... I am trying to think when I actually got this little ironing board and I am sure I moved into our present house with it in 1997.

It lives right next to my workspace and was increasingly looking sorrier and sorrier for itself. The original white cover got browner with age and a lot of use and more recently, started to wear through. I couldn't bring myself to even take a photo of the now discarded hideous cover. I am too ashamed. So instead I will show you Pressa's new cover.



I'd been putting the task of recovering Pressa off because I thought it might be cumbersome and difficult. In the end I bit the bullet and it turned out to be a pretty simple make. I took off the old cover (cringing with shame as I did so!) and unpicked the binding around the edge. There was a piece of thin and sorry-looking fleece under the fabric cover. I used it as a template to cut two new layers of Insulbright which is a kind of fleece-y wadding used for placemats, oven-mitts etc. I then used the old cover as a template to cut a new cover piece from some old Debbie Mumms quilting-weight cotton fabric from my stash.



I used the old binding to measure out a piece of new bias-binding. I reused the nylon cord from the old cover and inserted it inside the binding as I sewed the binding around the new cover. The fleece layers sit on top of the metal frame and the new cover over the top of that. Then the cord is pulled and the new cover tightens itself around the frame and holds the fleece in place. The whole project took just over an hour to complete (with coffee break included!)



I am very happy with this project and Pressa looks as good as new. As far as new years' resolutions go, this was a quick win for me.

Hope you are having a good weekend, friends.

3 comments:

  1. It looks great, Ady. Must be great to have a table-top ironing board - very useful. I put off recovering my board for years and was really surprised what a quick and easy job it was to recover too.

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  2. I just threw out my cover yesterday while cleaning out my craft room. It was pretty nasty. Maybe I will have to try and make a new one instead of buying one. Yours looks so pretty! Thanks for sharing

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  3. FIona - I too was surprised at the ease of this project and was kicking myself for not having done it sooner.

    Thanks Feral Turtle - can you retrieve the discarded old cover just so you can use it to make a template for a new one? If not, I reckon you could just turn your ironing board upside down onto some paper and draw around it. Cut a couple of layers of fleece just slightly bigger than your paper template. Then add maybe a 2-inch or even 3-inch border around your template and use that to cut out your cover fabric piece. That should give you the extra fabric needed to wrap over and under the edge of yuor ironing board.

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