How I Became The Ironing Board Cover Lady

An Accidental Business Is Born

I led a completely different life before I became The Ironing Board Cover Lady.

I was a market research consultant and on the Board of Directors of the American Chamber of Commerce in Sydney. My partner, Victor Pleshev, was an architect. The ‘recession we had to have’ in Australia, starting in 1989, decimated the building industry and architects in particular.

Victor’s main clients were developers and they were the first to fall.

By early 1992 the writing was well and truly on the wall. We had to close our business, say goodbye to our 16 devoted staff, sell our house of 19 years and personal possessions to pay most of our debts and make a new beginning.

We had a decision to make. Stay still and brood. Or get over it, pick ourselves up, move forward and start anew.

To start anew is a ‘no brainer’. That roadmap is a journey with a destination.

But! We are making this new beginning, this new start in an already maturing life, as poor as church mice! With some debt still hovering over us, to pay off over time.

Where to make this new beginning was an easy decision. We always wanted to live in the Australian bush.

But on different terms.

Have a country house and keep our city terrace house in Balmain, where we lived.

The city terrace house had to go, but the country property was a definite possibility.

There was an extended drought in 1992 and our purchase was an over cleared, over grazed small sheep property of 54 hectares (about 130 acres) selling for the right price for us.

The farmer who owned it was desperate to sell. He was sick of the drought. And the cold winters.

He wanted to pack up and move north where the weather was warmer and the rain fell in more abundance.

To our delight, he happily financed us until we arranged our own financing.

What attracted us was WATER! It has a drought proof bore.

Why is this exciting?

It means we can have the large country garden we always dreamed of.

I’m an expat American. Born in New York City. I’ve mainly lived in apartments, townhouses or terrace houses with small gardens.

I’ve always yearned for the solitude and freedom of the wide open spaces.

But you can’t have a garden without water. Our climate here is hot and dry in summer and cold and frosty in winter.

We used to have abundant winter rains with sluggish summer rains. Climate change has reduced the abundant winter rains to occasional winter rains and a big hope for rain in summer.

So a drought proof bore means part of our dream can come true.

My New Place In The Bush

The location is perfect. 970 metres high, tucked between the scenic hills of Bathurst and the burgeoning vineyards of Mudgee. And only a few hours from Sydney.

As exhilarating as this new start is, the reality check is this: – we still have to earn a living.

Selling our terrace house in Balmain to pay our bills means we aren’t independently wealthy. Victor comes with some architectural projects in tow, but I come with no work prospects at all. And the architectural work will dry up quickly.

Victor has always designed products for his clients, so we decide to try our hand at product design.

Our first product is an accident. An ironing board cover. Designed as a gift for his mother.

His mother, Rita, was recovering from a stroke.

Her major side effect is the loss of feeling in her right hand. Not noticeable to you and me, but a problem for her. Holding a teacup, struggling with an ironing board cover that constantly moves, holding an iron, aren’t easy tasks for Rita.

While visiting her in Sydney in 1994 and watching her iron, she bursts into tears because she can’t control both her iron and the cover that is relentlessly in motion on her board.

The next day we go out to buy her a decent cover. One that won’t move on her board.

We come back with a few. None of them do the job for her. Drawstring covers are too difficult for her to pull tight and good quality elastic covers look like giant mushrooms on her board and don’t fit tight.

On our drive back from Sydney, Victor muses that if he can get a multistorey building to stay up, he can get an ironing board cover to stay on his mother’s board.

And he does.

Over a period of 6 weeks, he designs and perfects The Fitz Like A Glove™ Ironing Board Cover. And gives it to his mother as a gift. And promptly forgets about it.

A few days later his mother rings. She has orders for 20 covers!

He tells her he’s an architect and doesn’t make ironing board covers.

She explains to him that she loves her cover so much, she rang all her friends in the Russian community (yes, they’re Russian) and they all want one. And we can’t let her down by not making them.

So there we are, at our dining room table, cutting out and making ironing board covers!

Victor is chief of layout and cutting and I’m head seamstress.

Our tools are a pair of Singer battery powered scissors that will only cut two pieces of fabric at a time, a 25 year old domestic sewing machine and a brand new, domestic overlocker, purchased in haste to get the job done.

An accidental business is born!

Take care,

Carol

Prototype Kills Sewing Thrills

I started sewing when I was 12 years old. Not because I thought it was a handy skill to have. No. I was flunking sewing in junior high school. And I had something to prove.

I was an honour student. Scoring A’s & B’s. And here I was, flunking of all things, SEWING!

I come from a family of innate talent.

My mother was a couture dressmaker in New York City.

My father was a very talented pencil artist and in great demand as a freelance commercial artist.

My maternal grandmother sang in the chorus at the Metropolitan Opera.

My maternal grandfather was a barber. His shop was on Broadway and he was a barber to the Broadway stars.

Next door was my paternal grandfather, a shoemaker. He made shoes for the likes of Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks!

Even my older sister showed early talent as a gifted artist in charcoals.

I assumed I also inherited this mass of unbridled talent that knew no bounds.

But I didn’t.

My school sewing project, a simple blouse, has me stumped. I remember the blouse well. It was pale blue cotton with a simple collar, short baby doll sleeves, front and back darts that are fitted at the waist and buttons down the front.

The semester is 12 weeks long. By the end of the 12 weeks, we are supposed to have finished our blouse and wear it to school on the last day. Most of my classmates not only finish their blouse, but are making skirts and dresses to fill in the gap until the end of the semester.

Five days before the end of the semester, I still haven’t sewn two seams together correctly. My darts are not only pathetically crooked, but are barely holding together. Because I ripped the stitching out so many times, the fabric is so perforated, it resembles tatting more than a solid piece of cotton.

In desperation, I take my blouse home for my mother to finish so I can wear it to class on the last day.

And as all mothers do for the children they love, she rescues me and makes my blouse wearable.

But barely presentable. Not with all those holes I make from ripping stitches out. The uneven collar length, a result of my seam ripping, followed by the trimming I do to even things up, becomes more Nehru than the intended Peter Pan.

How did I get into such a wretched state?

During class, my sewing teacher prefers to paint her nails than give help. Those of us she considers hopeless have to wing it on our own.

At the end of the semester, my sewing teacher rewards me by giving me a ‘D’ rather than an ‘F’.

She personally thinks I’m incredibly inept and deserves an ‘F’. I think she’s cold and heartless. As well as completely disinterested. I’m sure my hatred of her is a mutual feeling.

Why is she so gracious to only give me a D?

Deep within her beats a very slightly warm heart.

As an honour student, an ‘F’ will keep me off the honour roll that semester. But I was liked by my school principal, who told her I had scored enough A’s during the semester to make up for a ‘D’ and could, therefore, stay on the honour roll.

With a ‘D’, my sewing teacher achieves her objective of marking me low.

And you know what? I can’t help myself. I am genuinely grateful for such a merciful decision!!

But I still loathe and despise her and hope I never cross her path again.

Infuriated that I can’t get the hang of sewing, I decide to teach myself, with the help of my very talented mother. Never one to turn my back on a challenge, I immerse myself in all the technicalities of sewing and discover I absolutely love the creative thrill it gives me. To wear something to school that is admired by my classmates is flattering.

My ‘bespoke’ clothes transform me from ‘inept’ into ‘expert’. I become a fountain of knowledge about sewing and am the girl everyone turns to for tips and information.

From the age of 12 until 1994, I make everything. All my clothes of every description, including tailored suits, overcoats and lingerie. Home furnishings, bedspreads, slipcovers, blinds, lampshades. There is nothing I haven’t tackled.

So when my partner, Victor, asks if I will make the ironing board cover he wants to design for his mother, I say yes in the blink of an eye. What’s to an ironing board cover? It has a fabric top and elastic around the edge. Sounds simple, doesn’t it?

That’s the last time I’ve said yes without asking what he has in mind.

When Victor shows me his design, I realise he is going to use his 25 years of architectural design and structural knowledge to develop an ironing board cover the world has never seen before.

What I don’t know, is that I will sew virtually non stop for 6 weeks.

Victor also has his own eye-opening discoveries.

His first is not knowing the size of his mother’s board. As this is a surprise gift for her, he can’t ask her. And a quick walk through any hardware store shows him there are a few sizes to choose from.

Not to be deterred, he rings Hills Industries in Sydney, who make ironing boards, and develops a friendship with their technical director. He gives Victor all the information he needs to be able to develop a cover that will fit every board made within the last 60 years.

Hills Industries is more than a bit amused that an architect is trying to design a cover for his mother.

With that out of the way, we have to assemble all the components before we can sew the first stitch.

First is choice of fabric. And this is our initial indication that maybe his mother, Rita, isn’t the only one who has a problem with poorly fitting ironing board covers.

A search through Material Matters in Mudgee NSW shows a large choice of synthetic fabrics, but a more limited choice of heavy duty, 100% cottons. When the sales person asks why it has to be pure cotton and not a synthetic, I tell her it’s for an ironing board cover, so it has to be durable and resistant to burning. “Ah,” she says, “so you’ve had enough of those cheap covers, too?”

One light bulb goes on!!

Second component. What is he going to use for the tension cord? This is the secret ingredient that gives the perfect fit and stops the cover from moving on the board. It has to be stretchable, but much firmer than ordinary elastic.

As an architect, Victor is used to ringing suppliers to find the unusual to fill design criteria, so this is nothing different. Calls show, however, that there is only one company in Australia who makes what he wants. It’s cotton covered shot cord. And he can buy a small quantity of 100 metres. We need 1.8 metres, but 100 metres we have to buy if he wants to make this for his mother.

Third component. The clips to secure the crisscross tension cord. We look at – to me – thousands of options, but come back to one type that we know will last forever. Curtain track glides. Think about it. You pull your drapes and curtains back and forth a squillion times and they rarely ever break.

Fourth is the interior elastic that threads through the hem that ensures the cover always has a tailored, sculpted look. As a sewer I only use braided elastic. But we are presented with a cheaper option of knitted elastic. One quick yank and the knitted elastic breaks. We are never able to break the more expensive braided elastic. So braided elastic it is. It’s our easiest decision.

All up, there are 11 components to this cover. I feel like Sherlock Holmes, hunting for and then celebrating the discovery of each elusive item we want.

Assembling them seems to me the hard part, and once completed, we are ready to sew.

I thought we’d knock this over before dinner!

6 weeks later the cover is finished.

This isn’t a spare time project. Victor dedicates every day, often several hours a day, to complete this gift. This is a harder challenge than he anticipates and he’s going to see it to completion. And completion day is March 20th. His mother’s birthday.

Because Victor wants to make sure this cover will fit his mother’s board without any hiccups, he insists it has to be a one size cover that fits all boards. So we borrow ironing boards in every size from our new country neighbours, for our fittings.

They think we are raving lunatics from the city.

As do farming friends from nearby Mudgee NSW who ring to invite us out several times during those 6 weeks, only to be told we can’t go. Denis finally asks what we’re doing that makes us so anti-social. We reluctantly tell him we’re designing an ironing board cover. He hangs up, speechless!

The design and sewing is done in 3 segments. The nose first, the heel next and the middle last. Doesn’t sound hard, does it?

But we are novices at this. Driving on ‘L’ plates without an instructor.

So every segment is cut out, sewn and fitted an interminable number of times. The slightest crease or bulge means an adjustment has to be made. A new piece cut out, sewn and refitted. Again. And again. And again.

One day, I’m sitting at my sewing machine watching Victor do a ‘fitting’ and realise I can no longer stand the sound of the ironing board creaking. Every time he touches it to adjust his prototype, it creaks. And it seems to me it creaks non stop, hour after hour.

I think I’m ready for a prolonged stint at Rozelle Psychiatric Hospital.

There is personal conflict as well.

Victor at times assumes the mantle of commander-in-chief and insists on telling me how to construct his prototype. Him telling me how to sew! That’s like me leaning over his shoulder and telling him how a roof should be pitched.

We get through this with stony silences from me.

Victor thinks I’m the Wicked Witch from Oz. Best avoided at every sighting!

As with all things, the day comes when it’s finished. Finally, once and for all. Never to be made again.

It’s tucked into its little pouch, complete with fitting instructions, and mailed to his mother, Rita, as a surprise birthday present.

I blow it a kiss as it goes down the chute of the post office.

I desperately want her to like it – to make the 6 weeks worthwhile – but deep down, I never want to see that cover again!

But as with some things, they don’t happen as you’d like. She loves it. She tells her friends. We make 20 more. Then make the next 500.

And I grow to hate the sight of my sewing machine.

This accidental business is growing. And we desperately need to find a company to make the covers for us.

Take care,

Carol

Sewing Companies Bark And Bite!

Making the first 500 Fitz Like A Glove™ Ironing Board Covers on our dining room table is stretching our patience. This isn’t what we want to do. As these covers are slowly developing into an unexpected business, we decide our time is better spent on market development, not making the product.

After a little searching, we find a sewing company in Bathurst, an hour’s drive from Ilford, who say they’d like to make the product. We give them the opportunity to make a few dozen, so they can work out an appropriate price per cover, and agree to a price.

We place an order for 250 covers to be ready for our first Mudgee Field Days in July 1994.

A few days before the Mudgee Field Days, we arrive to pick up our covers.

The first thing we notice when we enter their building is the impenetrable barrier put in place which bars us from entering their sewing area. Prior to this day, we’ve been able to freely access the back area and speak to the sewers to discuss any problems they are having and work out ways to make the sewing easier for them.

We don’t twig to the fact this barrier is for us!

When we approach the counter, with our cheque made out for the agreed price, the business owner appears with bad news. She tells us the covers were more difficult to make than originally thought. Remember, they practiced on a few dozen, which we paid for, before setting their final price.

She’s adding an extra fifty cents to the price per cover.

FIFTY CENTS!

That is an unexpected $125.00. We say we won’t pay, can’t pay, and we have, in writing, an agreed price.

Her response?

We can see a lawyer, if we wish, but she isn’t releasing the covers until we pay the extra $125.00.

My response?

Initially, it’s to jump over the counter and inflict the same pain onto her that she just caused us!

Fortunately for all of us, Victor is right behind me. His response is to take my arm, escort me out of the building and lock me in our car while he goes back inside.

As an architect, Victor’s highly skilled in negotiating with builders, engineers, clients and tradesmen and women of every calibre. His skills are honed towards a win-win situation. Everyone must feel they’ve won something at the end of the deal.

When he returns to the car with our 250 covers, he tells me he convinced her, albeit reluctantly, that the agreed price was a moral issue, but she still wouldn’t release the covers. After some verbal massaging on his part, and to ensure there was a win-win ending, he offers to pay her an extra 10 cents per cover. Which she accepts and releases the hostages.

My innermost feelings haven’t changed though. I spent my childhood playing on the streets of New York City with the neighbourhood boys. I learned a few things from them. That sometimes taking no prisoners is a good option!

The next stop?

A sewing company in Windsor, just outside of Sydney and about a 3 hours’ drive from Ilford. We find them in the Yellow Pages.

The factory owner is a great guy. Affable, experienced, eager to help us and wanting to do the work. He gives us an estimated price, but to make sure we won’t experience the ‘Bathurst Hostage Syndrome’, we place an order for 50 covers so they can work out an exact price and agree to pay whatever price they set, to release those 50 covers. If the price is agreeable, we’ll place an order for more.

Their price is a few cents more than his estimate. We like their workmanship, so we place an order for 500 covers.

By this time, The Guide Dogs are selling our cover over the telephone to raise funds for the training of guide dogs and pets as therapy dogs. They are a big client from the first day. So we really need a company to make 500 covers at a time.

And what a relief to know we’ll no longer be making ironing board covers!

A phone call from Windsor lets us know the covers are ready to pick up. With great excitement we get in the car and drive the 3 hours to get them.

A girl in the office directs us to a roller door. She says the covers are there.

As we approach the roller door, the floor manager, Mary, meets us. First, she hastily thrusts an invoice into Victor’s hand.

Then she starts barking at us!

“Your covers are a pain in the bum to make!”
“You’re too fussy!”
“It is, after all, just an ironing board cover!!!!”
“No one here wants to make them!”
“Don’t come back!”
….are the words I seem to remember.

And with that, a man inside starts hurling the covers, packed in plastic bags, out the roller door, bag by bag!

A ‘pugnacious dog’ has just bitten us on the hand!

Victor goes into the office to talk to the factory owner. He is apologetic, but says his workers don’t want to make them. Too fiddly, they tell him. There is easier work to do.

Devastated, we drive back to Ilford hardly exchanging a word, each of us deep in thought. All we want is to find a company that will make our products with love and care.

A few days previously, I was reading Business Review Weekly magazine and remembered an article about the NSW Industrial Supplies Office. It helps businesses find companies to work with, it said. That was a different perspective. We’re the government and we’re here to help.

In desperation, we ring early the next morning. We tell them our criteria. First. We want to keep the manufacturing in the Central Tablelands, where we live. Second. To be made with love and care by men and women who have a disability.

We think this is a tall order.

But they ring back within 2 hours with the names of 3 companies they think will suit us. Victor rings all three and we agree to meet one company that day.

And it’s been a perfect match ever since.

Wangarang Industries in Orange NSW has been sewing for us since 1995. Finding them was like Goldilocks finding just the right bed to sleep in.

And like Goldilocks, I let out a great sigh of relief. This time I know I’ve sewn my last Fitz Like A Glove™ Ironing Board Cover!

With the sewing finally off the dining room table and out the door, it’s time to get to know my customers.

There’s more.

Take care,

Carol

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