Picture this.
You’re starting on a brand new quilt project and just got all the yardage you need to make it. You run to your sewing area ready to get started ironing it all so you can start cutting!
After laying it all out, you realize you have 5 yards of a background fabric, and 8 yards of a backing fabric, and TONs of smaller fabrics for your blocks. With your ironing board only having a surface area of 12” to iron on, you’ll be at this all day!
But what if you had an extra large ironing board for quilting? Something that was squared off, so you can fit more fabric on the ironing board at one time, and one that was deeper than 12” so you could iron more fabric at one time.
Did you know that modifying your current ironing board into an extra wide ironing board made for quilting costs less than $50?
I decided to give it a try this weekend and I made a new top to my ironing board and it has made ironing so quick and easy that I even have patience energy afterward to start cutting!
It’s a game changing tool that I can’t believe I’ve gone this long without, so today I’m showing you exactly how I did it so you can get one of these life changing boards too.
Materials
Wood top (we used 16”x55”)
Batting (4 layers)
Fabric (2 yards)
Old ironing board
Screws
Washers (optional)
Tools
Jig saw
Hand saw
Hand sander
Screw driver
Stapler
Scissors
Pen
Measuring tape
Step 1: Cut out board to desired length and width
Cut your board to 16”x55” using a handsaw.
This will both make your board longer and wider, squaring off the tapered end so you can iron yardage without going on an angle.
I stayed at a standard 16” board because lumber prices during COVID are through the roof i’m lazy and just didn’t want to rip a huge piece of plywood. My personal main goal was to square off the taper so it wasn’t worth the extra effort to me.
You can easily cut different dimensions of board to fit your personal quilting needs and still follow this tutorial.
If you’d like to cut your board to make it a wider ironing board or a longer ironing board, just be sure to stay tuned for some things to keep in mind to keep it stable.
Step 2: Round the corners
Once you have a rectangular shape, it’s a good idea to give a rounded edge to the corners of the board so the fabric and batting wraps around the edges easier.
We aren’t looking for an oval shape to your board, just a softer corner. Kids, pets, husbands, all agree, it’s a good idea for when it inevitably gets backed into, vacuumed into, or knocked over accidentally.
To round off the corner, start by taking a bowl from the kitchen and place it in one of the corners of your board.
Trace the edge of the bowl with a pen or marker to get a rounded shaped marked on it to cut out. Repeat the process on the other 3 corners.
Using a jigsaw, cut out all of the corners so it has the rough shape of rounded corners.
It’s okay if it’s not a perfect rounded edge, you’ll get a better chance to even it out during sanding, and most imperfections will be hid under 4 layers of batting anyway.
Close enough is definitely good enough in this case 🙂
Step 3: Sand all edges
Grab anything that will take an edge off the board: orbital sander, router, even good ‘ol sand paper will work, and go to town taking those splinters down on all of the edges on both sides.
This is a good opportunity to smooth out any slightly wonky shaped corners so don’t be shy.
The next step is to wrap the board in your batting and fabric, so having the edges slightly dulled, will allow the materials to round the corners much easier giving you a tighter fit.
Without it, the material often gets caught at the sharp corner making it tough to get a snug fit leaving you with a loose fitting cover that moves when your fabric is pulled over it.
When you’re done, give it a quick wipe down to remove any dust from sanding before moving on.
Step 4: Wrap board in batting
Three layers are okay, but four is just luxurious! So I went with four layers.
For this project, you’ll want to stick with 100% cotton fabric, you don’t want to find out the hard way that a poly blend batting doesn’t appreciate the constant heat of an iron.
Make four layers of batting, leaving it 2-3 inches larger than the wood top on all sides. This will allow you to wrap the batting around the edge of the board and secure it underneath without loosing any layers.
Hint: this is a great opportunity to do some frankenbatting! If you have remnants of cotton batting that can be repurposed, check out this tutorial from National Quilter’s Circle on how to recycle pieces of batting to make one large piece again.
If you do decide to reuse smaller pieces of batting with stitches holding them together, try to keep them to the bottom two layers closest to the wooden board.
Keeping two layers of clean batting on the top will keep your board’s surface looking perfect so the stitches combining the batting pieces don’t show through potentially leaving marks when ironing.
Once you have all of your layer, wrap them around the back of the board and secure them in place with the stapler.
The next step is to trim away the excess batting, so if you keep your staples within an inch or so from the edge of the board, you should have a bit of batting to trim.
Step 5: Wrap batting in fabric
By now your board probably looks pretty hairy on the back side.
Four layers of batting puffs up pretty well and probably doesn’t look all that great, so now its time to clean it up a bit.
By wrapping the pretty stuff 🙂
Following the same process you did for the batting, cut a piece of fabric to cover the board giving yourself enough wiggle room around the edges to entirely cover the edges of the batting once you wrap it around.
Fold the very edge of the fabric back under just a bit to create a finished edge that wont unravel, and wrap it around the back of the board until it just covers the edge of the batting and staple it down.
Repeat the process all the way around the board being careful to pleat and staple the fabric in the corners to keep it smooth.
Once you are done you shouldn’t be able to see any batting edges and you are ready to attach!
Step 6: Attach to base
Keeping the new top upside down on the floor, flip the old ironing board upside down as well, with the legs extended, so it sits on your new top.
Position the old ironing board until it sits the way you like. Using a measuring tape is a good way to make sure it sits square, I didn’t have a huge amount of wiggle room so I just eye-balled it.
Time to screw it down.
My ironing board had some good sized holes in it to use, however the heads on my screws weren’t quite big enough to keep from pulling through.
We went out and grabbed a few washers from Lowes and that did the trick.
If you have a mesh base on your ironing board, or the holes are just large, this is a great trick to make sure it stays on well.
We screwed it down in about five different places to keep it secure, one at the tapered end, two in the middle, and two at the back.
It’s not going anywhere haha.
Step 7: Iron away!
Now that you’re attached, flip everything back over and iron away!
You should now have a rectangle ironing board ready for that next project worth of yardage to iron 🙂
Although we’ve finished the steps to make your own extra long ironing board for quilting, you might now be thinking you don’t have the space, tools, or just the desire to make one one your own.
We’ve got a fix for that, we’ve answered tons of frequently asked questions about ironing boards and quilting, as well as did some research on some of the best extra long ironing boards for quilting that Amazon can provide.
How to change the dimensions of this project for an extra wide or extra long version
I am fortunate to have commandeered a spare bedroom for a sewing room, however my dedicated ironing space is limited.
In an effort to avoid the room feeling claustrophobic from a massive ironing board, I decided to keep my board a standard 16” width (not to mention it made it easier to cut). However, if you want to be able to put a full fat quarter on the top of your ironing board without moving it, you’ll want a board width of at least 19”.
Making a longer or wider ironing surface using this tutorial is as easy as changing the dimensions of the wood board you put on top in step 1.
Just a few things to keep in mind as you play with different dimension:
More wood = more weight. If you go longer, be sure to try to cheat the originally ironing board so more weight sits over the legs instead of having a ton of weight hang over the unstable tapered end.
If you aren’t careful, the weight may be too much and it may tip forward from being top heavy.
Along the same lines, be sure to evaluate the strength of your original ironing board so the legs don’t simply collapse and fold under from the overall weight of the new top.
Why do you need an ironing board for quilting
I rarely use my ironing board for normal laundry haha – only for quilting! So if I didn’t sew regularly I probably wouldn’t get why it was worth the effort of modifying it.
When you quilt, the more accurate you are, the easier it is to assemble, and the better product you make.
Although 1/16th of a difference when cutting fabric doesn’t seem like enough to make a difference, if you have 4 seams in your block all with that large a difference, now your one block is 1/4” different in size from the one next to it.
In quilting the goal is to have every seam and point match up, so when your blocks are different sizes, that goal gets much harder to accomplish.
When you have wrinkles in your fabric, the fabric is actively working against you to shrink up in the wrinkles adding small amounts of fabric to those pieces once the wrinkles smooth out.
Related:
Intro to Squaring Up Fabric for Quilting
Those wrinkles will make your blocks bigger than you intended once you start to iron the smaller pieces during assembly.
By starting out with the smoothest most wrinkle free fabric, you take that inaccuracy out of the equation and set yourself up for success as much as possible.
What is the advantage to using an extra wide ironing board for quilting
The one and only, but seriously important advantage to using an extra long or extra wide ironing board for quilting is speed/efficiency.
Ironing is tedious, and I would venture to say that it probably doesn’t make the top 5 favorite steps to making a quilt.
Which is saying something, because I’m not sure there are even 10 steps total…
9 out of 10 quilters agree, the faster you can get through the ironing steps the better.
The more time you have to move the fabric to iron more, the longer it will take.
The shorter your ironing board is, the more likely you’ll have to only iron half of the yardage at a time because the width of the fabric doesn’t all fit on top at one time.
That means you’ll have to iron the full length of yardage, only getting to the center of the fabric, and then turn it around to finish the other side.
And that will take you twice as long.
The longer your ironing board is, the easier you can fit the full standard 44” width of fabric on the board at one time.
The wider your ironing board is, the less sections you’ll have to iron the fabric in because you’ll be able to get more at one time.
Having a larger ironing board in both width and length will allow you to tackle your yardage ironing much quicker and get you to the fun parts of quilting faster.
Not a DIYer? Check out these top Amazon alternatives instead
Using an ironing board for quilting makes a huge difference in your efficiency while preparing large amounts of yardage for your projects.
So if you don’t have the space or tools to DIY or simply don’t have time or desire to DIY, Amazon will always have (many) perfect solutions.
I love using my ironing board for quilting so much that i want to make sure I cover all of my bases to make sure you find your perfect solution for this often overlooked, but game changing, quilting tool.
Although I haven’t gotten a chance to try out each one of these, I went through the deep dark depths of Amazon to research some of the most popular store bought quilting ironing boards so you know exactly what to look for.
Here’s the top 3 Amazon recommended options as well as some of the highlights and drawbacks of each board based on reviews:
Mabel Home Extra-Wide Ironing Pro Board
Although made more for dress shirts than quilting yardage, Mabel Home’s Extra Wide Pro Ironing Board is constantly on the top 5 list for ironing boards.
A few of the awesome notable features include:
- Retractable wings to widen the tapered end of the board
- A tray to support your iron so it doesn’t indent your board’s padding
- Cord guides to keep your ironing cord out of the way while you iron
- A wire hook to hang finished articles of clothing or yardage on while ironing other pieces
With over 680 reviews, there are tons of people loving this board on Amazon.
With only a few critical reviews, under 5% at the time of this writing, some people aren’t fans of how the extension wings are attached to the board. The recurring theme includes a slight drop in elevation where the wings meet the main board which has the potential to leave ironing marks in the fabric you are ironing, however with any removable extension you are bound to see something similar.
Check out Mabel Home’s Extra Wide Pro Ironing Board on Amazon here.
Reliable 300lb Ironing Board Table
Almost every where you look for top ironing boards on the internet, you’ll find this ironing board by Reliable. While this ironing board does top the list as the most expensive, it is also the only industrial grade ironing board available that was designed specifically for quilters.
It has a 2-in-1 convertible style top to it to go back and forth between a squared end and a tapered end, and also has a separate mount on it just to hold your iron. The support itself is ergonomically design at an angle so quilters that are constantly reaching for the iron don’t end up with wrist fatigue after long stretches of ironing.
and with double supports in the legs, you won’t see any wobbling from this ironing board, even with all of that yardage hanging off of it.
While the most common critique of this board is its price point, the close second is the weight of this board.
At 30lbs, this board is intended to be set up and left up long term in a sewing room. If you have a smaller quilting area that requires an ironing board for quilting to be put away between uses, or hung in a closet, this option may not be the best choice.
However, if you have a dedicated spare bedroom, basement, or laundry room just for sewing that allows for an ironing board to be set up permanently, the size, stability, and versatility of this board may just be the best investment you’ve made into your quilting career yet.
Singer’s Crafting Station Ironing Board
Singer makes it all. First sewing machines, now ironing boards too!
Singer has designed this ironing board specifically for crafting. This one is a constant rectangle shape that even has a ruler grid on it!
One of the common themes in the critiques of this board is that the ruler on the ironing board cover is not accurate, but i’m not sure that’s necessarily a down side though.
i just don’t know of a situation where I would need a ruler on the ironing board since you can’t cut against it anyway, maybe that’s just me.
Does anyone actually know what putting a ruler on the ironing board padded cover is used for other than design? If you use something like this be sure to help me out and let me know how in the comments below, I can’t come up with anything myself where it is an actual drawback that it’s not “accurate”.
Other features that Singer has included is a similar iron mount as well as a super useful retractable tray for tools, starch, pins, scissors, or anything else you might be working with.
A second common theme that comes up in the critiques of this board is that you can’t actually store anything in the retractable tray because it’s so shallow. I think that this must be a misunderstanding though because it is described as a tray, not necessarily a drawer for long term storage.
A surface to hold tools at the time that can be hidden away, kind of like those old school desks with the retractable side surface. So as long as you are looking for a tray to put things on while you craft, and not necessarily a drawer to store them in long term, you’ll be golden.
You can find this one on Amazon here.
So whatever you iron with, the theme of the day is bigger is better. Whether you DIY one, or go the Amazon route, getting yourself an ironing board for quilting is a game changing tool that will make you significantly more time efficient in your ironing that you’ll be glad you went for.
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