I mentioned back in my post about our bedroom that I would give you guys a tutorial for the headboard so here it is! This didn’t turn out perfectly by any means but I think I have learned from my mistakes and I have an idea of what to do differently next time.
To get an idea of what to do, I used this tutorial from Thrifty Decor Chick. It’s pretty straight forward and I know there are a ton of other tutorials out there, too. All you have to do is use the google. Disclaimer: I strongly encourage using one of those tutorials instead of mine. You’ve been warned.
Step One – Figure out what size/shape you want. We used 1/2″ in plywood and decided not to do anything fancy with the shape of it. We made the headboard big enough so that we can still use it if we end up upgrading to a King bed down the road.
Step Two – Cut plywood (or MDF) based on the size and shape you chose.
Step Three – Figure out how many buttons/tufts you want and where you want them – drill holes for the thread to pass through. If you don’t want to tuft the headboard you can skip this part.
Step Four – Cut foam to size. We used mattress toppers from Target (just like in TDC’s tutorial).
Step Five – Forget to adhere foam to plywood with spray adhesive, causing the next step to be more difficult than it needs to be OR actually use a bit of spay adhesive to secure the foam so you don’t have to worry about it flopping around before you can wrap it.
Step Six – Wrap foam with batting or muslin and staple to the back of the plywood.
Step Seven – Iron your fabric (or forget to iron your fabric and regret it later…see where this is going?) You could also do this as Step One and then you won’t have to stop mid-project to get it done, just make sure it doesn’t get all wrinkly while it’s patiently waiting for you to finish.
Step Eight – Wrap fabric around the batting and staple to the back of the plywood. If you have a patterned fabric, this is a little trickier because you’ll want to make sure the pattern stays straight…or maybe you’re a rebel and don’t care that your pattern is slanted. I won’t judge.
Step Nine – Go back and pull fabric tighter in some areas but not others and staple more. Tip: Don’t actually do this unless you want to end up cursing yourself and going back to remove some of the staples before saying “screw it” and carrying on anyway.
Step Ten – Use fabric scraps to make buttons. We picked up a kit similar to this one from Joann Fabrics and they turned out pretty well. Of course, it took me a couple of hours and destroyed my fingers because apparently I’m not very adept at button making.
Step Eleven – Tuft. We used waxed thread and it was pretty easy to work with. My process was to satple one end of the thread to the back of the plywood, pass it through the foam, thread the button, pass back through the foam, and staple the other end a couple of times.
Step Twelve – Mount the headboard on the wall…which we still haven’t actually done so I have no tips for you there.
Now here are some things I think went wrong:
1 – I did not iron the fabric. WHOOPS. This means there are some wonderful creases from where the fabric was folded after it had been cut as well as some wrinkles where the fabric wasn’t quite tight enough before I tufted. I mainly just hide them with pillows where I can.
2 – I didn’t know how tight to pull the fabric so I’m not sure if I pulled too tight or didn’t pull tight enough but I definitely wasn’t consistent with either.
3 – I didn’t know how tight to pull the buttons. I pretty much just pulled them until the tuft looked right. Again, not all of my tufts are the same but I’m not sure if that’s because I didn’t pull the fabric to the right tautness or if I wasn’t as consistent in the actual tufting or some combination.
Here is how our’s looks currently:
Wrinkly – I guess that means it matches the rest of the bedding.
I have played with the idea of taking all of the staples out and trying again but there are probably over 100 staples on that thing so I decided against it. I figure it’s not so bad for my first attempt and I don’t mind how it turned out at all although I may try using some wrinkle releaser on it. We may end up making a day bed for my craft room so I could always use it in there and make a new one for our room if it starts to bother me.
Still on tap to share with you guys is our night stand tutorial but I wasn’t involved in that build so I’ll have to have Kyle write something up!
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