When I attended Kilt Kamp this past summer we setup a steam station on one of the large tables in the classroom. We had to protect the wooden table top from damage from the steam. A steam mat was made out of ironing board material, thermal batting, and a vapor barrier. When I got back home I thought it would be a good idea to have something like this. I have a large drafting table that I use with a large cutting mat which could serve this purpose when I don’t have the cutting mat on it. Rather than having to assemble separate pieces of material when I wanted to use the steam mat I wanted one more permanent. I found ironing board material at JoAnn Fabric along with the thermal batting. The batting is called Insul-Bright and is sold by the yard. It is made from a poly batting with a reflective metalized film. The metalized film serves as a vapor barrier but in class we found it was not sufficient. Vapor was getting down to the table. We added a thin layer of plastic which I think was nothing more than garbage bag plastic. Rather than use plastic sheeting I found a Space Emergency Blanket still in the original packing. These are made from a metalized Mylar material. The MSDS sheet indicates the material is Polyethylene Terephthalate that can take 235 degrees F before it breaks down. That should be sufficient since the plastic we used did not melt. To protect the Mylar vapor barrier I added a bottom layer of bottom weight poly/cotton material. Sewed it all together with edge binding. Sewing this was a little bit of a challenge as the Mylar is very slippery and the top batting wanted to slide around under the pressure foot of the machine. I ended up hand basting all the way around the edge of the assembled layers to help hold it all together. Once I sewed down the top of the double fold binding I took a rotary cutter and trimmed the material flush with the edge of the binding. Wrapped the banding around the layers of material and “stitched in the ditch” to connect it all together.
My only concern was how well the Space Blanket will hold up over time. I am concerned about it ripping. I will just have to monitor for any vapor leaks as time goes on.
This is what the final blanket looked like on top of the table:
I ran a temperature and vapor test to make sure it worked as intended. I placed a couple of paper towels under the blanket and a thermometer. After repeated hits of 10 seconds of full steam the paper towels were dry. The thermometer hit 140 degrees at one point. As long as I don’t place the steam blanket on top of my cutting mat it should be fine. I think the table top can take the temperature.
This is how the layers of the blanket were put together:
So now I need to make another kilt to try it out.
Mike
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