Iron Quick Fabric

If your ironing board cover is starting to look a little worn, a little stained from years of use, and you really don't want to buy a new one, you might consider making one. And so you need to stop by your local fabric store and ask for iron quick fabric. This is iron quick fabric. It's machine washable, or you wipe it with a damp cloth. Usually comes in a small package like this, or sometimes as yardage. You can also find it online, which is where I got that. And it is a reflective, heat-resistant fabric. That's why it's used for ironing boards. On the other side, you can see that it's woven. It's a woven fabric that has this heat-resistant coating applied to it. It's primarily used for ironing board and sleeve board covers. This is part of a sleeve board. I just brought part of it with me to the studio. You can tell it's had a few years of use with tailoring and sewing. And what you do is you'll basically remove the cover just a snippet, and take it off and use it as a pattern to make your own ironing board cover. And especially if you have a sleeve board, it's hard to find the covers for them, so I would just use this method. There are other methods or rather other uses for iron quick fabric. One of them is for potholders. And this is a really cute little one. You can make it without a pattern. Just about the width of your hand, draw a heart. And you're going to need two pieces of fabric for the heart or rather for the outside of the heart. And then you take two more pieces, cut them just slightly smaller, and then you're going to fold it in half and sew those on. And in between, you've got a piece of batting. And then all you have to do is come back and put your binding on there. And that quick, you've got this wonderful little hot pad mitt that you can use for your pots and pans in the kitchen. They're wonderful Bazaar sellers. They're great for fundraisers. They're a real quick little gift. So consider that for iron quick. Another thing is to make potholders with your leftover quilt blocks. So cut a large square of the iron quick fabric. You're going to want to use a thick batting. I like this Quilters Dream Deluxe batting. It's thicker than the Select, which is what I usually use in quilting. It's more dense. It's a firmer one. It's great for wall hangings. But it's a thicker batting. If you can't find a heavier weight batting, then use at least two layers, maybe even three of your regular weight batting. Cut the square the same size, layer it on, and then take your orphan block, center it up. And I do it larger because it will shrink with the quilting. Now you have several options. You can go ahead and stitch in the ditch and go through all of the layers, just like you would with a regular quilt. You don't want to over-quilt it, because you need the pockets of air to help with the heat and to make it easier to fold your potholder when you're using it. So don't over-quilt it. Just do enough to literally hold the layers together. If you don't want the quilting to show, just quilt through the batting. Then come back, pin it to your iron quick fabric, trim it, and then put on a binding and a little tab, and you're good to go. The third option is to turn this right side down, your block, everything else is still layered. Stitch all the way around, leave an opening at the bottom, turn it inside out like a pillow case, and then just put on your tab, and you will be all set, and then you just have to hand-stitch at the bottom. So you have several options, but I'll tell you, once you get using the iron quick fabric, I think you're going to get hooked on it and find that there's quite a few uses for this wonderful fabric.