Ironing Buddy

My layers

Alright how many of you have pulled out your humongous ironing board for use in your quilting project and then had no room to move around in the room you were planning to work. Me!!!!!!!  I was so frustrated and then I found a wonderful solution on pinterest.  Thank heavens for pinterest!  Someone had the brilliant idea of turning a TV tray table into an ironing buddy.  They actually stapled everything directly to the wood, but I need to be able to use it as a regular TV tray again after I am done.  So I thought to myself, why not make it elastic like they use for ironing boards.  So here goes.

Layers on the TV tray

To start with, I need to be able to pull it out and use it with a minimum of fuss and frustration.  As a stay-at-home mom of three I have plenty of frustration without causing myself more.  So I am making it like a sandwich.  The top piece is 100% cotton, the middle is cotton batting, and the base is another piece of 100% cotton.

Layers from the bottom

After I got my batting trimmed to the proper shape, I pinned the back piece over it with a little room to spare on the edge.  I also folded under any edges that might ravel.   I then stitched along the outside edge of the base piece.  This insures that I am not going to have fuzz or any issues with the batting at the edge.

Pinned neatly

After removing all of the pins I rolled the edge of the top piece so that it would form a pocket for the elastic.  I then sewed it close to the edge.  After threading my elastic through the pocket I sewed up the hole that I had left open for this purpose.

Sewing the edge

 Sorry about the chipped nail, but the mom's among my readers will totally understand.  After everything was done I got to looking at it.  I am afraid that I am going to need to do a little quilting just to keep everything properly distributed.  This should be fairly simple though.  One project down, who knows how many around the corner.  ;)

Elastic pocket pinned

Finished product on the tv tray