In the spring of 2024, as I was working my way through Bernadette Banner's catalogue of YouTube videos on sewing, costuming, and fashion history, I came to one on ironing. Banner's videos are usually more entertaining than practical for me. I love seeing the beautiful, creative things that she makes, but I'm not into costuming or historical sewing practices myself, and I am a reasonably good sewer and don't tend to learn much from watching her sew. But I'm not as good with an iron as I should be, and at that time my only ironing tools were a thin cotton handkerchief that I used as a press cloth, and a hand towel that I would roll and/or fold into whatever shape I needed to support the seam I needed to iron. For that ironing video I took notes as I watched. By the time I reached the end of the video, I had learned more advanced techniques for seam pressing and decided I really ought to get a tailor's ham, a tailor's clapper/pressing block, and a clothes brush.
As of this writing, tailor's hams are $32.79 plus tax at Fabricland, with sleeve hams priced at $29.49 plus tax. While I'd often lingered over them when I saw them, I had never bought any sewing hams. The video mentioned that one could make one's own tailor's hams, something I'd never thought of doing, so I searched online for instructions on how to do that. I soon came across an excellent and comprehensive tutorial with accompanying free downloadable patterns from Twig + Tale. The tutorial explains which fabric and stuffing is best for such a project, and the patterns include not only the traditional ham shape but also a pattern for a sleeve ham, or sausage. I had everything I really needed to make a tailor's ham and sausage: patterns, remnant fabrics, and polyfil. However, the tutorial said that while there are various options for stuffing hams, the best stuffing for a tailor's ham is sawdust as it won't compress over time.
I had no sawdust, but I knew someone who did. My father is an award-winning woodworker and also, as anyone who routinely works with wood must be, a prolific sawdust producer. I told him I knew what I wanted him to make me for my birthday in August 2024: a bag of sawdust. Dad had one of his knees replaced in the October 2024 and the second one replaced in the April 2024, so I asked him if he thought he was feeling up to such a strenuous and challenging woodworking project. I didn't want him to overexert himself. He modestly assured me that he thought he could handle it.
I had initially expected that Dad would simply sweep up some of the sawdust he produces during the course of his regular woodworking activities and pour it into a bag for me, but Dad didn't think that would do at all. He took this sawdust request just as seriously as he takes all his woodworking projects, which is to say, very, very seriously. Dad asked me how much sawdust I wanted, and I said, "One grocery shopping bag full." He asked me how finely ground I wanted the sawdust, and I said,"Uh, medium I think." He asked me what kind of wood I wanted and I said I didn't think that mattered. He spoke to me about it several times during our phone calls over the following months, and mentioned that he'd gotten my sister-in-law to research sawdust stuffing online for him.
When my parents and sister came to Swan's End for my birthday lunch in August 2024, I was presented with a brown paper yard waste bag containing all of the sawdust you see above. When I protested that I had only wanted one grocery store bag full, Dad said he had wanted to give me different grades of sawdust made from different kinds of wood, and that I could dump whatever I didn't use on the garden.
Given my father's overperformance on the assignment, and how special this sawdust was, I felt that I needed to make more than one set of tailor's hams. I made a list of all the people I knew who sewed and might want a set: me, my sister Alanna, my sister-in-law, and my friends Christine, Lindsie, and Una. I did ask my mother if she wanted a set, but she said no, as she isn't sewing new things very often anymore, and mostly just does alterations and mending.
In November 2024, I made my first set of hams. The Twig + Tale article says that while hams have traditionally been made with one wool fabric on one side and cotton on the other, making the entire ham out of wool is even better, so I used some brown wool remnants I had on hand to make this first set which was supposed to be for me.
I can't say I actually enjoyed making these tailor's hams. The process of stuffing them turned out to be frustratingly slow, tedious, and messy. I experimented with different methods of getting the sawdust into the ham in the hope of streamlining the process, such as a plastic funnel from the kitchen and then a larger funnel made from a sheet of paper, but I can only say that the most effective tool of any I tried was a tablespoon. Spooning the sawdust into the hams was still slow, but at least it was faster and neater than using my fingers.
After I'd finished the first hams, I realized that my ironing equipment upgrade really ought to include a new ironing board cover. The green-striped cover you see above was one I'd bought circa 2011. It had gotten very grubby and stained over the years as it wasn't washable, and the elastic was shot, so the cover would no longer stay in place.
I dissected the old ironing board cover and salvaged what I could. The cover fabric, foam layer, and elastic all went into the garbage, but the fleece layer was still in decent shape, and I put the plastic fastening clip in my bag of fasteners and clips for some future use.
I washed the old fleece layer and sewed it back together for reuse with the new cover.
When making the new cover, I stitched together a bunch of short pieces of elastic that had been my bag of elastics. It was a good way to use those up, and saved my longer pieces for projects where having a continuous piece of elastic would actually matter. Yes, that is a diaper pin you see attached to the one end. I snitched that pin from my mother's sewing notions as a teenager, and I think it might just date from my own diaper-wearing days circa 1973-1976. It's very useful as a sewing notion. The sliding cap keeps the pin from coming open when I'm trying to push it through a casing, something ordinary safety pins are all too prone to doing.
The new ironing board cover. I purchased a length of light spring green cotton print fabric for this purpose, one that would work with my attic workroom's colour scheme, which is "neutral with accents of robin's egg blue and spring green". Then when I found that the new ironing board cover took just under half the width of the fabric to make, I made a second identical cover. There was no point in leaving that extra fabric sitting around indefinitely, and two covers made at the same time and used in tandem will last just as long as two made and used consecutively. I'm so glad I did, because I've really been enjoying having two ironing board covers. Whenever the cover I am using gets to the point of needing a wash, I can throw it in the laundry hamper and pop the fresh one immediately rather than having to schedule the laundering of a single cover in such a way that it doesn't interfere with my sewing activities. I did not tack the fleece layer to either of the new cotton covers so that it could be used with both covers.
I used a tutorial to make the new ironing board cover, and ordinarily I would link to it as it's my practice to give credit to any other person's work that I use in the process of my own, but I recently lost all my internet bookmarks when my laptop died and I had to get a replacement secondhand laptop. I can't find the ironing board cover tutorial I used now. But it's probably just as well. When I tried to find the tutorial I used, I found a lot of ironing board cover tutorials that offered higher-level instructions. For instance, there was no mention of any batting layer in the one I used, and an ironing board cover really ought to have some padding. I wish I'd done more research before picking a tutorial for this project. However, the two basic covers that I made are certainly adequate and usable when used with the fleece underlayer from the old cover. They should also last longer than the commercially made one I had before, as they can be machine washed and the batting layer and elastic can be replaced as needed.
My iron and ironing board were a Christmas present from my mother in the late nineties. I still remember seeing the wrapped ironing board propped behind the wall behind the tree when I got to my parents' place on Christmas Eve that year. Mum had tried to disguise the content of her gift by squaring off the wrapping paper at the pointed end, but one might as well try to gift wrap a hockey stick. I took one look at it and said, "Thanks for the ironing board, Mother," and she said, "You don't know that it's an ironing board! Multi-mixers come in very strange shapes these days!
I accidentally knocked the iron off the board some years back, and wound up with a broken iron and a dented parquet floor. I glued the plastic housing for the iron back together. The glued pieces occasionally come apart and have to be reglued, which is a pain, and I would love to get a new one, but that would be wasteful when this iron works as well as ever. I'm going to keep using it until it dies.
In May of 2025, when I was to see my friend Christine for her birthday lunch and hadn't gotten around to making her set, I gave her the brown wool set that I had intended should be mine.
In the summer of 2026, I finally made the remaining five sets of hams. I didn't have enough wool remnants on hand to make the hams entirely out of wool, so I made the five sets in the traditional way, with wool and cotton fabrics. My set is pictured above, with brown wool on one side and a spring green cotton print on the other. The green print is not the same as the one on the ironing board but rather a different remnant, some of which I had already used to make the English paper pieced pincushion you see on the ironing board. It is nice to have a coordinated set.
This is the set of hams I made for my sister Alanna, out of a cotton print remnant I had leftover from a jumpsuit I made for my honorary niece and the felted pieces of a thrift shop sweater I had actually bought as a gift for my mother and that shrank when I machine washed it in cold water. I'm still very cross about that sweater shrinkage incident. (I had bought a coordinating silk scarf for that sweater!) But since it had happened and couldn't be helped, I made lemonade out of that lemon or, um, ham and sausage out of that pig. The two fabrics coordinated so well that I think this set of hams is the cutest of the six sets I've made.
This is the set of hams for my friend Una. Una loves purple, and for this set, I used some purple cotton fabric leftover from my mask-making efforts from the early 2020s and another felted thrift shop sweater, though in this case I bought the sweater with the intention of felting it. I'd previously made her a pincushion and a tissue case in that same purple fabric. I can hardly wait to give these things to her.
Ham and sausage set numbers five and six, which are intended for Lindsie and my sister-in-law. Lindsie actually has a pincushion made from this birds and tree branch fabric, and she went on about how much she loved the fabric when I gave it to her, making it a good choice for her ham. I'm pretty sure my sister-in-law will like her set of hams too. The print is attractive, and accords well with the brown wool. Just to be on the safe side, when I give them to my SIL, I am going to tell her that if she doesn't think she'll use them, to feel free to give them away to one of her friends who sew.
When I had finished stuffing the sixth set, I had one grocery shopping bagful of sawdust left. Dad gave me at least seven times as much sawdust as I needed. I can't think of a stuffing-related purpose for the remaining sawdust, but I'm going to keep the bag on hand for the present. I might use it on the garden next summer if nothing else arises.
Once I had the hams all made, I bought a clothes brush and a set of tailor's clappers. My initial plan was to ask my dad to make me a pressing block. As a first step in this process, I looked at the commercially available pressing blocks online in order to decide on the design specifications that I would give to my father because, as you may have gathered from the whole sawdust production scenario, my father is a woodworker who needs detailed plans for his projects. But when I found this set of clappers for under $24, I wound up buying them.
My father is 88 and has been in palliative care for cancer since November 2024. He's still working in his shop nearly every day, but his progress is slow and he has so many projects already on the go and more in mind. I rather hated to add to that list, I didn't know when or if he'd ever get the pressing block done, and I was impatient to get and use it for my sewing projects. Dad also would be highly unlikely to ever make me a roller-style clapper, and it would be so very useful. Block-style clappers can only be used on flat seams, while a roller like that could do curved seams. The point turner tools would be handy too. And how cute is that little sewing machine decorative detail?
To the set of clappers, I added a wooden spoon that was in my kitchen utensil drawer. As demonstrated in the Bernadette Banner ironing video, a wooden spoon handle can be very useful for pressing the seams on sewn tubes.
There was no need to replace the handkerchief I use for a press cloth. The hand towel that I had been using in lieu of a tailor's ham retired to my linen closet.
The last step in the process was to find some sort of container to hold my ironing equipment and extra ironing board cover. Keeping my ironing tools stashed in the little space at the end of the shelf by my basket of sewing patterns as I had been doing when I had fewer items was not going to work for the expanded collection. They'd be constantly falling off the shelf and behind the bookcase. My first thought was that I'd have to find some sort of decorative box at a thrift shop, but when I started thinking about what I had in the house that would do the job, I remembered I had a stack of four unused baskets sitting on my hall closet shelf. The largest, heart-shaped basket, which was another late nineties Christmas present, proved to be just the right size for this purpose. The candles and glass candle holders that used to sit on top of this bookcase (and which I had never once lit since I renovated and decorated the attic in 2012) were put away in the little candle cupboard in my kitchen for some future use, and this basket of ironing tools took their place. I iron right in front of that bookcase, and it's easy to get whatever I need from the basket.
And that completes my ironing equipment upgrade. When I searched through my scribble notebook for the notes I took on that video before I began writing this post, I found that I also wrote down "sleeve board" and "tailor's anvil", but I don't think I'll get those unless I should happen to come across them secondhand. My sleeve ham should work nearly as well as a sleeve board, and I can probably improvise something for seams that come to a point.
I've never liked ironing and I doubt that will change, but knowing how to iron more effectively and having better tools has made the task less difficult and frustrating, and will mean that my sewing projects will have a more professional look when finished. And I'll be sure to take at least some pleasure in using these carefully made and thoughtfully purchased tools.
