DIY Ironing Boards Tutorial

hi there today I'm going to talk about portable ironing boards and how I make mine in the beginning of my video you can see that I've made all different sizes this blue floral one is my largest one that I keep on my countertop the size that I make my ironing boards are the same size as my cutting mats I find those sizes the most convenient I have my cutting mats in all of these different sizes because use them in different areas of your sewing room and take them on retreats and so that's why I have the same size in the ironing boards as my mats because I use them at the same time cutting and ironing my smallest size cutting map is convenient to make little cuts but it would be too small for an ironing board by the way all of my cutting mats have a different color on each side you can pick whichever color you'd like to match your sewing space or if you happen to be cutting the same fabric color as the mat you could easily flip it over to the other side for better contrast now let me tell you a little bit about the fabric that I'm using to cover these this is my new decorator weight fabric it's 100% cotton and it's 58 inches wide it has a super nice soft feel to it the best way I can describe it is like a lightweight canvas but it's really soft there's six different prints in the collection and the collection is called my happy place of course because I designed it for my sewing room and I designed it for yours as well this is what the back looks like and I also wanted to show you if you're worried about your staples sticking out and ruining your surface you could just use these felt pads that you use for furniture legs and stick over the staples and that would work just fine okay so let me show you how I make one I use half inch thick plywood that I get at Home Depot now they'll cut it to size for you or you can cut it yourself I think the first ten cuts are free and I always have them take the corners off just a little bit I kind of like that when I'm folding over the edges it makes it nicer and I don't have to worry about the corners being pointy and poking through my fabric so this is my setup when I'm getting ready to cover first I grab my fabric this is the print I'm using for this one and I'm gonna lay it on my surface with right side down and when I cut the fabric I just cut it with my scissors I don't really measure I just eyeball it like two or three inches passed all the way around so I have that first and then next I use this silver ironing board fabric that I buy it by the yard and I get it at Joanne's and I just cut it about the same size and I also lay it right side down and last comes the batting I use the same kind of batting that I use when I make my quilts it's a thin batting this one is an 80/20 blend by Hobbes of course you can use whatever you want I just like to use thin batting I prefer a harder surface when I iron I find that if the surface is too soft that it will distort my blocks when I'm pressing them okay so I use a staple gun and let's talk about staples I use three eighths staples because I'm using half inch plywood this way it won't go through to the other side so when I'm doing the corners so pretend those are staples then I just fold it up like this and then fold it back down and then I go ahead and put a staple on each side and that seems to work just fine but I do staple both straight sides that are opposite first and then I end up doing the corners last so this is what it ends up looking on the other side nothing fancy super easy peasy to make as super functional now of course you can make yours any size you want to fit your sewing space this one like I said before is 18 by 12 that's a pretty great size I'll use this size and then my smaller size like this which is 9 by 12 when I only have a little bit of room at a retreat I'm really having a lot of fun playing with these prints and you can bet the first thing I made when I got them with ironing boards so besides this largest blue floral one on my table that I use every day this is the size that I use a lot in my studio it measures 16 by 24 and I put legs on the bottom you can buy wood legs at Home Depot I painted these using my farm girl paint and picket fence color you could just leave them unfinished would how they come but I like mine painted so when I put these legs on I measured them so that they would be square or rectangle whatever you want to say but these legs from Center to Center point are 12 inches and then going this way they're eight inches from the center of each leg and there's a grid on the board to kind of help with placement so by having legs on one of them you could take this one to retreat and you could stack supplies underneath you know maybe make that a little bit more convenient as well but the real reason that I put legs on this one is so that it fits in the top of my key of rolling carts and it also fits in the top of the Michaels rolling carts as well but look how nice and sturdy it fits I can roll it around I can take this to retreat and it's extra storage space in the trays okay so now we've talked about ironing boards let's talk about irons specifically vintage irons vintage irons are my favorite and that's all that I use there are several reasons that I use them one is they're really heavy so they press your blocks really nicely the old irons actually have a point on the end instead of rounded so they press your blocks like when your seams are open they're just it's just really nice so I find my irons at antique shops or garage sales or whatever and let me just tell you a few things to look for you definitely want one that has a heat dial setting this little one does not and I remember it was one of the first ones that I bought and I brought it home and plugged it in and it scorched literally everything they just get so hot so look for one with the heat setting and I never turn mine past medium on that dial and they are plenty hot you could try and when you find if you'd like but on the ones I have I've never had to go past medium so the next thing you want to look at is the cord if it has a really frayed cord you do not want to use that you want to replace it you can buy cord replacement kits like a Home Depot or something so another thing you want to look for is something that has a flat surface something that was not a steam iron so that you don't need these holes this one is like I think from the 60s but it had a little bottle that attached to it for steam and so that's why it has the holes but I prefer an iron with a flat surface because I found for me that when I use one with holes it distorts my patchwork when I pressing and I don't happen to use steam because I feel that it shrinks my blocks I use spray starch or a water bottle before I cut my pieces out okay so on these last two irons I wanted to show you something there are two different brands one is a Hotpoint and one is a westinghouse and you can actually take these cords out that fit in to these irons and you can interchange them from each other and this info is good to know because sometimes in the antique shop you'll see just an iron without this cord or just this cord and so I just picked them both up and then I can piece them together to make one iron so I hope you find this video on ironing words and vintage irons interesting and helpful and I'll chat with you next time [Music]

Channel: Lori Holt

Views: 173,484

Rating: 4.934598 out of 5

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Id: LqThaNkpf3s

Length: 9min 2sec (542 seconds)

Published: Fri May 22 2020