DIY - Wool ironing pad & shelving
Thank you to the user who asked about people's favorite things in their sewing room, it finally inspired me to clean up and take some pictures!
The most expensive part was the cube shelving itself. I specifically needed something open-backed and on legs (so the heat from the baseboard heater can get through to the room), and found something on Wayfair for $99. If you're thrifting or have shelving of your own already, you're good. The important part is that your shelving isn't longer than your wool is wide.
I used boiled wool yardage, the type for outerwear. You need 100% wool so it doesn't melt from your quilt-temperature iron. I went with boiled because it's... pre-felted? partly felted? I don't actually know how relevant that is, but it made sense to me to go that route if I was going to blast this thing with steam. Which I do. It's expensive, but crucially, the WOF is quite long. The wool I found was 57" wide, so a half yard was more than enough for my 15"x48" shelf top. That was $22.
I bartered with my local carpenter for the plywood base and access to her staple gun. (She wanted a set of quilted mug rugs.) The Home Depot website has a similar piece of plywood for like $30 so let's go with that - again, someone thriftier or more skilled than I am could do way better than that.
There are two layers under the wool. First is a set of silicone baking mats, so the steam doesn't penetrate down to the plywood. I got three of them from amazon for $9 - you might want to search for playmats or crafting mats. Mine weren't quite long enough for the whole board, but that hasn't been a problem. That's the corner where the iron lives.
Second is a layer of batting. I had a strip of leftover cotton/wool blend in the right size. BattingSuperSale has a crib size package of cotton/wool at $15. I'm positive that plain cotton would work fine. Maybe avoid piecing scraps if your frankenbatting skills are as bad as mine, but the wool is probably thick enough to cover non-terrible seams.
Assembly is literally as simple as stapling the layers together. I cut little squares out of the corners of the batting to cut down on bulk, but that might have been excessive. I didn't do anything to attach the board to the cube because I want to be able to take it to sewing retreats, but the folded-over wool keeps it thoroughly grippy. No worries about it shifting whatsoever.
So... thrifting nothing, this project would come to $175. I spent $130. You could easily spend less than that. And I am extremely happy with the result both as storage and as ironing surface. Zero issues with heat or moisture penetration, and the cubes are the perfect size for storing fabric on comic book boards.