Ironing board recuperation

It came as a shock to me a couple of weeks ago when I realised that our ironing board cover had almost completely worn through, considering it is so rarely used, apart from when Jim has a sudden shirt-ironing spurt. So I popped over to Fabrics Galore, my cheeky little fabric haven round the corner on Wandsworth Road and picked out some good quality cotton in order to replace the original ironing board cover.

If you feel like a change of ironing scenery or need to replace a worn away cover, all you'll need is:

• fabric (preferably heat proof) 4 inches wider all the way round than your ironing board
• approx 2.5m string
• pins, needle and thread

and that's it!

1. I began by laying the ironing board upside down on the fabric and pinning the edges of the material into a loose seam about an inch wide, leaving enough fabric to wrap underneath the board, once tightened with string.
2. I used the sewing machine to quickly stitch the hem all the way round and then I threaded the string through (this takes a bit of patience!)

3. With the fabric laid pattern side down on the floor, I placed the upside down ironing board on it once again before pulling the string tight, to ensure that the fabric was taught and evenly positioned over the old ironing board cover. I didn't bother removing the old one as it adds extra padding over the metal frame.

 

4. I then tied the string into a tight bow, making sure the fabric was equally ruched the whole way round the board, and tada...

...a new ironing board cover (with added dangly bits!)

The Patchwork Quilt: the finale

You may have noticed that it's taken me rather a long time to complete the patchwork quilt project, but now, finally, it is finished, and I was so so happy last night when I finally stitched the last stitch :)

So, from where we left off last time (The Patchwork Quilt: how it all began) the next few stages took place as follows...

With all my rows stitched together I set about ironing down the seams of the underside of the patchwork so it would lie better once sewn together with the wadding.

I then laid the patchwork on the floor, placed the wadding on top of that and then the undersheet I intended to use on top of that, in order to cut everything to the correct size, making sure that the wadding was about half a centimetre larger all the way round than the material, so that the quilt filled out well when sewn together.

As my patchwork was larger than the wadding, and I wanted to use as much of it as possible, I folded and pinned each side to the undersheet (face to face, and being careful to avoid pinning the wadding) so that it created a nice, 1 inch patchwork border on the underside.

I then removed the wadding, turned the quilt the right way out, and set the folds where I wanted them in the material using the iron. With this done, I set about sewing the patchwork to the undersheet on three sides, leaving all the corners and one end unsewn to fit the wadding.

With the wadding back inside and the material the right way out, in order to make the corners look neat and concise, I folded the corners of the patchwork in on themselves into a triangle by about 8-10cm. I then wrapped the two corners of each triangle around each corner of the wadding, and pinned them into place before sewing by hand.

Next, I pinned the last edge together, folding over the fabric to hide the sloppy edge of the patchwork, and sewed along the edge of the patchwork by hand, with small invisible stitches.

I then used the sewing machine to stitch all the way down the sides of the quilt, leaving about a 1 inch border along each edge, or using the overlap of the patchwork on the undersheet to give a nice border, ensuring that the wadding was spread out flat, right to the edges of the fabric.

FINALLY, I pinned all three layers of the quilt together with about 40 evenly spaced pins, to make sure the wadding didn't move around inside, while I made the same amount of tiny little knots through the top and bottom of the quilt to hold the wadding permanently in place.

And here is the finished thing, that made me smile with so much relief and a little bit of pride!

The Patchwork Quilt: how it all began...

As I mentioned the other day, this patchwork quilt has been a fairly long-term project. It all began a few months ago when I thought it would be nice to have a light quilt that we could use to throw over our seen-better-days sofa throughout the summer, and that would look equally nice thrown over the end of the bed in winter, over another attempt I made at a duvet cover about three years ago (below).

 
Well, it feels like winter is fast approaching and the patchwork quilt is finally nearly finished!

I started by cutting out hundreds of little squares using a 10cm by 10cm paper template. When I had arranged them into some sort of pattern-like order on the floor of the living room about a thousand times I finally came up with a diagonal symmetrical design I liked with red as the predominent colour (to match the minimal colour scheme in the bedroom).

With the rows laid out on the floor I began the ardous task of collecting them up in the order they were to be sewn together and numbering each pile with little post-its so there was  absolutely no confusion about which little square was going where.

Feeling confident about the order of each row I began pinning each square together face to face and stitching them...

...into long strips as above.

When I had all the strips needed to go across the width of the quilt I trimmed off the excess thread hanging from each seam and ironed the backs of the seams so that the small amount of material on the back of each seam was flat to the main body of material.

I then pinned each strip to the next, face to face, and sewed them together row by row...

...until I ended up with this.

I'm not bothered at all by the squares not lining up exactly, it won't spoil the overall effect of the quilt and unless you've measured the exact size of each patch, and the exact width of each seam, you're bound to end up with a little homemade giveaway in the slight overlap of some of the patches!

TO BE CONTINUED...

Quilting project numero uno

So a while ago I began a patchworking project to make a quilt/throw to cover up our budget cream ikea sofa in the living room, which I successfully spilt purple nail polish on within the first fortnight of getting it...

It has so far been one of my longest projects (much to Jim's despair), as it took me a while to decide which colours to go for, collect the fabric, cut it into squares, pin them together etc etc, but now it has taken on a patchwork sheet-resemblance and this weekend I was down the final decision...

POLYESTER WADDING OR ECO-FRIENDLY BAMBOO WADDING?

I spent about half an hour in Fabrics Galore below on Wandsworth Road - one of my favourite places to spend a Saturday morning, or afternoon, or whole day in fact! - trying to decide between the two waddings, and it was pretty much one of the hardest decisions ever. In my heart I wanted to go for the bamboo as it is much more environmentally friendly, however, it was about five times the price of the polyester. I was also told that the polyester is completely washable, and that made up my mind. Fickle I know, but polyester wadding it is.

Fabrics Galore, 54 Lavender Hill, Battersea, London SW11 5RH

I have the wadding rolled up at home and some time this week it will convert the patchwork sheet I have constructed into a fully fledged, squdgy quilt, with a squiggly pattern sewn on and all.

Wish me luck!