TV Tray turned into an Ironing Board

Most of you know that I love to sew. I really love it. For a long time, every time I sewed, I would haul out my gigantic ironing board just to press seams. Uggh! What a lot of work. So, I transitioned to a TV tray. I draped a towel over it and used that for an even longer time. It was much, much better, but such an eyesore next to my sewing machine. I finally decided it was time to fix that, so I upcycled my TV tray into an ironing board! It was pretty easy to do.





Want to see how I did it?

I started by lightly sanding the wood. It didn’t need very much. My TV tray was old and I think it only had a light finish to begin with.




After sanding, I spray painted it black.




You really only have to paint the bottom, but I couldn’t help myself and gave the top a light coat also. Can one every spray paint too much?

Then, I measured the top. Mine was about 14 inches by 18 1/2 inches.




I cut enough batting to cover the top of the TV tray. You can make it as thick as you want. I used about 3 layers, but I think you could go thinner and it would be perfect. The more you use it, the more flat it will get as well.




After the batting was cut, I layered the fabric (right side down) and batting like this:




Then, I placed the TV tray on top.




Next, I folded the fabric in and took my handy dandy staple gun to staple it in place. (Imagine a staple gun placing a staple next to the hand holding the fabric down. It’s hard to hold a camera, the fabric, and the staple gun at the same time!)




I did the outside edges first and saved the corners for last. Here’s how I did the corners:



And that’s it! It’s finished!! And this is what I love. I can pull it out while I’m sewing to press seams.



And when I’m done, it just folds up and stores nicely next to my sewing machine.



Now if only I could keep my sewing area looking this clean and organized all the time. Hehe. ;)