DIY Tufted Headboard

I've made a couple of diamond-tufted headboards now and I feel like I have a pretty good sense of the easiest DIY approach now.

Gone are the days when I spend hours mapping out and drilling holes in plywood! I've been using pegboard and it is PERFECT for these headboard projects. Cheap, lightweight and sturdy enough. You'll be hanging the pegboard on the wall so it's okay that the board is not completely rigid.

I had Home Depot cut down the board for me, so it was just the right size for Alex and Joanna's queen bed. The holes on pegboard are 1" apart. You do have to do a little math and mapping out to figure out your button placements, but once you have the formula down, it's just a matter of counting it out and marking the holes with chalk.

I had three rows of nine buttons and two rows of eight for a total of 45 tufts. I wanted a lot of tufts though, so you could do less. I think it's a good idea to look at inspiration images first and count the buttons on that headboard and estimate the spacing you'll need for the look you're after.

I purchased my 3" upholstery foam at Joann's. I definitely recommend using exactly 3" foam for this project. Otherwise the headboard will look thin and cheap. An important note - you only need enough foam to cover the top two-thrids or so of your pegboard. My foam was 24" tall and my pegboard was 40". The bottom part without the foam goes behind the bed. So, to mark out your foam, lay the pegboard down perfectly on top of foam and use your registration marks and a sharpie.

One of the secrets of getting deep tufts is removing the foam where the buttons go. My method is pretty lame - I just use a paring knife to cut a hole around the registration marks. You just grab the foam bit, twist and pull out.

You'll fly through this step. It's a fun and easy one.

See how the foam only covers the top two-thirds or so of the pegboard?

Secure the foam to the pegboard using spray adhesive.

And lay down a sheet of high-loft batting on the top of your foam. The fabric goes on top of the batting.

A quick note about fabric. I used two yards of SOLID color fabric for this project. If you want to use a pattern (which I don't really recommend for tufting, unless the scale is super small), you'll have to piece together two or three panels of the fabric so that the piece is wide enough and so that the pattern matches up and runs the right way. Better yet, just use a solid fabric :) You can run the fabric horizontally (called railroading) and just get two yards and call it good. PS You really will only need two yards for a queen size headboard. I was worried that the tufts would take up lots of extra fabric. Not at all. Maybe an extra couple inches total were needed for the whole headboard.

Here's the part where you'll need lots of buttons. You can buy button making kits and refills for just a few dollars (I used the 5/8" size). It does take some time to make all the buttons though, so this would be a good place to enlist the help of a friend and get it done assembly style.

Using a long upholstery needle and doubled up upholstery grade thread (NOT the all-purpose stuff! This thread is more like twine), triple knot your button, and find your first button hole.

From the front of the headboard, push the needle through the fabric, batting, foam hole and pegboard hole, all the way out the back.

Pulling out and down as tight as you can, put a staple into the pegboard over the thread. But still keep pulling that thread to keep the tension. Put in a bunch of staples with the thread being pulled in different directions to secure that button in as deep as it can sit.

And your first tuft is done! You always want to start in the center and work your way out horizontally.

Be sure to leave the edges for last. I found it was taking me about an hour per row in the beginning. By the end I had it down to 20 minutes a row. Honestly though, my fingers were absolutely throbbing at this point! I busted this headboard out in a night and it would have been better to split up the tufting part into two nights, just to give my fingers a rest :)

Like any upholstery project, there is something to be said for keeping a soft hand and sort of artfully playing with the fabric. Especially when deciding where to place the button in the fabric and in getting the fabric to fold right. Play with the fabric and it will work with you. It's absolutely begging to sit in a diamond shape if you help it along a little. :)

Once all the tufting is done, you'll just need to finish off the edges. Don't just roll the fabric back behind the pegboard and staple it down. The key to nice looking upholstery projects is all in the lines. Minimize the bumps and wrinkles! The fabric, especially along the edges should be flat and smooth. To make the edges of a headboard smooth, fold in a line going straight out from each tuft toward the perimeter. The fold takes care of all the excess fabric so that the edges can be smooth and taut and ready for you to staple down on the back side.

To finish the bottom of the headboard, where the foam ends, just push your staple gun up under the foam a little and run a row of staples along the whole front bottom. Then pull the fabric down over the bottom edge of the exposed pegboard, neatly fold behind and staple back, like you did with the other three edges of the headboard. And that's it! We screwed three D-rings into the back and used a couple Wall Dog screws in the wall to mount the headboard.

You can see in this shot how the foam only starts above the mattress. This way the mattress sort of sits into the headboard.

PS The camel linen is from Gray Line linen, from their Warsa line (only $9 a yard and it comes in all the colors under the rainbow).

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DIY Tufted Headboard

This is the third headboard (second whole bed) we have made for our girls and I am always surprised at how easy it actually is. I think that this bed is my favorite! We have had such a crazy last couple of weeks at our house and I am surprised we were able to get this finished. But we were planning on surprising our daughter with the bed for her birthday so we spent a late night getting it all finished so it would be ready on time. I love it when a deadline forces you to get something done!

The entire process was actually pretty simple. I was a bit nervous about the tufted headboard and was quite pleased with how easy it actually was. It just takes a bit of time so keep that in mind if you want to give this a try at your house.

Step 1: We took a 4 x 8 sheet of 3/4 inch MDF board and had Lowes cut it to measure 41 inches wide by 50 inches tall. Step 2: We decided we wanted to go with a Belgrave style headboard shape. I wanted to have a bit of a white frame around the tufted material and we decided that the best way to get a clean look with the curved detail was to cut out the center of the board and use that as our tufted headboard, which would be able to slide right back into place. This would hide the edge of the tufting and give it a nice clean look. Step 3: We took a large bowl and used it as a pattern for the side of the headboard. The larger the bowl, the less of an arc you will havewhich is what I wanted. The edge/corner of the cut out from the bowl on each side measured 5 inches.

Step 4: Then you will need to cut out the middle section. The middle section (the tufted headboard part) measured approximately 36 inches wide by 25 inches tall. This gave us a 2.5 inch frame around the top and the sides with 28 inches on the bottom for the base of the headboard (which the bed frame will later attach to).

Step 5: We used Dremels Saw-Max to cut out the inner section of the headboard frame for the straight cuts. It was so easy to use and you can start cutting right in the middle of the board. We also used it to cut the boards for our bed frame. It is nice to have when you dont want to pull out your larger table saw. We found it to be really manageable (especially in a womans hand) and it comes with blades to cut through metal and masonry. For the curved portion, we had to take a small drill bit and drill a few holes along the curve so that we could cut the curves with a jig saw. *Ignore the double pencil lines on the right picture abovewe had initally thought to have a 2 inch frame and changed it to a 2.5 inch frame at the last minute to give the headboard more stabilitywhich is a choice I am glad we made.

Step 6: After the middle section has been cut outfind some cheap labor to clean up your work site. :)Sand both pieces of wood well and then paint the outer frame.

I will share how we made the tufted headboard in a later tutorial next week! I will include a link to it here when I have it ready!

In the meantimeI need to figure out what to hang above her bed now. I am terrible at the final staging of a room! Any suggestions? You guys are always so helpful with these sort of things! I make the big items and you help me decorate mmm kay?

You will need the following supplies to make your Piece of MDF board cut to your specifications 2 inch foam (we found ours at JoAnns) Drill and 3/8 inch Drill Bit Quilt Batting Waxed Thread (JoAnns) Button Making Kit with enough buttons for your project (JoAnns) Material for the tufted headboard Staple Gun and Staples

(Cut your MDF (if needed) to the specific size you need. Ours was cut out from the headboard, so we did not need to cut it anymore). See Part One for more details on this:

Figure out where you want your buttons. Do you want a square tuft or a diamond tuft? We went for the diamond tuft. Draw a dot with a pencil on the headboard where you will be drilling your holes. Then drill all the way through the MDF board with a drill and drill bit. We used a 3/8 inch drill bit.

Cut your foam so that it fits your MDF headboard with just a tiny bit of overlap around the edges. We had to piece ours at the bottom. We added the piece to the bottom where it would be more hidden by the pillows on the bed just in case it didnt piece well together. We did not end up having any issues with this though at all in our finished head board.

Cover both the MDF headboard and the foam with your quilt batting. Then pull the batting around the sides and secure it using a staple gun to the back of your headboard. Pull it so that it is nice and tight with no puckers or ripples on the front of the headboard. This will hold everything nicely in place and will give you a nice smooth finished product. Cut off any excess quilt batting. *You will most likely need two people to do this and the following steps.

Now take your Fabric you are using for your headboard and wrap it around the headboard the same way you did the quilt batting. Be sure to be very careful with the edges. Pull the material tightly and secure with several staples on the back of the headboard. Trim any excess material.

Set aside your headboard and use your Fabric scraps to make your tufting buttons. Simply follow the directions on the back of the package and make enough buttons for your headboard. We used the buttons that were 1 1/8 inches in size.

Take a large needle, we used a very long and large quilting needle that had a large eye. It needs to be able to be long enough to go through the 2 inch thick foam and the headboard. We threaded the buttons onto the needle with the waxed thread and doubled it for strength. My husband was at the back of the headboard and I was at the front. He poked the needle through the hole from the back end, just to make a small hole so we could see where to put the needle and thread so the button would be in the right spot. Then I took the needle from him and threaded it with the button (or you can use two needles so you dont have to keep swapping). I pushed the needle through the front and he took it on the back. I pushed the button in to make a deep tuft while my husband pulled from the other side and simultaneously stapled the thread several times on the back of the headboard to hold the button in place. We repeated this process for all of the buttons. Be sure to push in each button the same so that they are even in the front. This is important for the overall look of your tufting. We ended up fixing one button that was not pushed in far enough after inspecting the final headboard.

That is it! You should be done with the tufting! Wasnt that easier than you thought it would be?

We then took the headboard and inserted it into the cut out from the original bed. This now gives us a nice frame around the headboard and also hides the sides of the tufted head board and gives it a nice clean finish!

On the back of the headboard, we screwed in some metal brace plates to hold the head board in place and so that it would not fall out on our little ones head. This secures it nicely in place.

I had many ask about her night stand. It is from Target and it is a few years old and is a hand me down from her older sister. It was white and in need of some serious TLC. So I cleaned it up and spray painted it gray with Rust-oleum Spray Paint in Granite in a Satin finish.

DIY Headboard Complete!

Measurements below are for a queen bed; however you can easily adjust the measurements for any size bed, by measuring your frame and adding about 1/2" to an 1" on each side for the center measurement. i.e. a standard queen mattress is 60" wide, our frame is ~ 61 1/2" so we allowed 62 1/2" for the measurement between the wings so that the frame would fit easily inside. Even if your mattress is a queen, always measure because your frame may be different.

Once we had our plan, we gathered supplies: 62 1/2" x 48 1/2" plywood (1/2"), 1 x 4s, (for back supports), 1 x 6s and 2 x 6s (for side arms), 4 yards of fabric, 28 buttons to be covered, 62 1/2" x 48 1/2" foam (1"), batting to cover front and arms

The plywood was cut to size, holes drilled in plywood for tufting, 1x4s were cut to build a support around the entire back 1" foam was attached with adhesive to avoid it slipping while tufting

Batting was attached with staple gun, fabric on top (attached after tufting)

Buttons were covered with fabric (I also applied a small amount of gorilla glue on the interior of the button since I wasn't using heavy duty button covers, to avoid them popping off) I doubled up upholstery thread and used a long needle to tuft

Like the ottoman we made, I pushed to button from the top - pulling the fabric tight as I went

and David stapled from the bottom Fabric was pulled tight and stapled underneath on all sides Next the arms were attached - a 2x6 and 1x6 were attached together with screws - fabric and batting were cut to cover the arm fabric and batting were placed in between headboard and arm then the arm was attached to the headboard - fabric was pulled tight around the arm and stapled to the back

The fold for the fabric on the top of the wing was created by first pulling the fabric over the top - stapling on the outer side (staples to be covered by next step) and then wrapping the fabric around the front and side of the wing - folding the top edge to create the crease (excess fabric and batting were cut off at this point too) and then stapling in the back

Nailhead was applied on the edges of the arm - I found it pretty easy to eyeball it with the edge, but you could use a pencil or fabric pen to draw a guide line

I used about half the box of nail head, so about 500 in total

Price Breakdown: Plywood ................ $8.49 1 x 4s ..................... $4.98 1 x 6s ..................... $8.98 2 x 8s ..................... $7.58 Fabric (4 yds) ........ $40.00 Batting .................. $14.98 Buttons .................. $12.00 (28 buttons total) Nailhead ................ $13.82 (I used about half a 500 nail head box) Foam ..................... $29.97 Total ...................... $140.80 Not bad considering the amount of fabric and foam needed!

I loveLOVEa diamond-tufted upholstered headboard. I like them in just about any shape and size. Im just a sucker for diamond tufting. via The Paris Apartment, queen size $2200 But that deep tufting can be quite intimidating for some DIYers. But it shouldnt be! Once you learn the process, youll wonder who in their right mind would ever pay such an extravagant price for a headboard. So let me show you how to save a small fortune. First of all, youll need to determine the size of your headboard. The one I made for Gwen was a king size, so I made it 80 wide x 34 high. This allowed for a couple of inches to tuck behind the mattress at the bottom. Once youve determined the finished size you want, go to Home Depot or Lowes and purchase a piece of 1/2 MDF, and have them cut it to size for you. Youll also need:

a bowl or small plate (optional); a Sharpie marker; a jigsaw (optional); an electric meat carving knife; a tape measure; a yard stick or other long straight edge for marking lines; staple gun and staples; your choice of fabric, large enough to cover the headboard size, plus about 18 inches on each side; 2 foam, large enough to cover the MDF (this can be pieced together, if necessary); hi-loft polyester batting, enough for at least two layers to cover the MDF; adhesive for the foam (I prefer spray adhesive, although the fumes are quite noxious, so it has to be used outside, or you need to wear a protective mask); buttonslots and lots of buttons (Gwens king size headboard required 57 buttons, and I used half ball cover buttons and covered them in the same fabric as the headboard. Its a pain, but just go ahead and prepare these in advance, according to the instructions on the package.) one package of thin nylon or polyester upholstery/roman shade cord (can be found in the upholstery section at JoAnn Fabrics or other fabric stores); a large-eye upholstery or embroidery needle; and an electric drill with 3/8 drill bit.

Dont be frightened by the list! I promiseyou can do this!! To start, you will need to place your MDF on some support where both the top and the bottom can be accessed. Workhorses would be preferable. I used two chairs.

This step is optional: On the two top corners of the headboard, use a small bowl or plate as a template to round the corners.

Use a jigsaw to trim along the pencil mark to create rounded corners. Remove rough edges with sandpaper.

Now adhere the 2 foam to the MDF using your choice of adhesive. I prefer spray adhes ive, but if

you use it indoors, be sure that you use a protective mask, and that all furry and feathered creatures are in another room protected from the fumes.

You may need to piece the foam to cover the entire piece of MDF. Thats not a problem at all. Just be sure to get the pieces butted against each other as smoothly and evenly as possible. Trim any excess foam with your electric meat carving knife.

Now we need to mark where our buttons will go: Starting from the top of the headboard, place a mark at 8, 16, and 24. Do this in several places so that you can use those marks as guides to draw horizontal lines. Then use your yardstick or straight edge to create horizontal straight lines all the way across the width of the headboard.

Find the center of the headboard, and place a mark at the center of each horizontal line. Use your tape measure, and beginning from the center marks, place a mark every 8 inches.

Now use your straight edge, and place diagonally between the marks you just made at 8 intervals. This will show you where the buttons need to be placed on the diagonal.

Once youve got the whole headboard marked, it should look something like this. The top of the headboard is the long edge on the right side of the picture.

Next, use your drill to drill a hole through the foam and the MDF. Warning!! DO NOT go slowly on this. If you begin to drill slowly, the drill bit will grab the foam and rip it to shreds. You want to place the drill bit on the button mark, press down all the way so that you can feel the MDF, and then at FULL SPEED, drill very quickly through the foam and the MDF.

This next step is the one I dread the most, but its necessary. Professionals have a nifty little tool they use for this, but since Im not a professional upholsterer, I have to make do with substitutes. The goal here is to make holes in the foam for every single button thats large enough for the button to rest at the bottom of the hole. Make sense? In order to do this, I use a combo of this little tool and my fingers to pinch out the extra foam. This tool is nothing more than two different pieces I found in the plumbing section at Home Depot. I place the pipe onto the button hole area, and begin twisting.

This is the least fun, the messiest, and potentially the most frustrating part of the whole process, but when its finished and the mess is cleaned up, it should look like this

Now youre ready for batting. I always use two layers of hi-loft batting (itll say hi-loft on the package). The more layers you use, the deeper the tufting will appearbut of course, the more you use, the more your project will cost, and this stuff aint cheap!!

Then spread out your fabric on top of the batting. Be sure that the fabric is centered, and theres plenty of extra on all four sides. To begin the tufting, youll start in the center of the headboard, working your way down on the main lines you drew at 8, 16, and 24. As you work f rom one button to the next, be sure that the fabric is not pulled too tight. If you pull it too tight, youll lose the look of the deep tufting. If you need guidance on how to string the buttons, and how to secure them on the back with your staple gun, you can refer to step #23 through step #25 of this upholstered headboard DIY for details.

Continue working across the horizontal lines with the buttons. It should look something like this

After you finish all of the buttons on the horizontal lines, youll start on the diagonals. This is where the magic happens! When you press down on the diagonal, the tufts and folds should pretty much form by themselves. You may want to work with them a bit to create neater and cleaner folds, but you shouldnt have to do too much.

Once youve finished all of the diagonals, your headboard really begins to look like something quite special!!

The only thing left to do to finish the front is to secure the edges of the fabric and batting. Begin at one of the buttons, and create a nice, neat fold. Wrap around to the back and secure with your staple gun. You will do this around the entire headboard, creating a fold from each button to take up the slack in the fabric.

Once youve made it all the way around, the front of your headboard is finished!!

The back of your headboard will look like this. Pretty, huh?

The last thing left to do is to clean up the edges on the back. Youll have extra batting and fabric, so add a few more staples all the way around, and trim off the extra fabric and batting.

It doesnt have to look perfect, or even pretty, but you do want it to be flat so that your headboard can rest flat against the wall. Also, give all of your staples one last inspection, and hammer in any that arent all the way in.

And youre done! Now step back and admire your handiwork.

Now dont forgetif you try this project, Id love to see your results! !! Also, once you understand the process, you can easily modify the plans the create any shape you want. If you want a curvy headboard, like the one in the first picture, then start by drawing your shape, cut it out with your jigsaw, glue the foam and trim to the shape using an electric meat knife, and then start at the center line to mark your buttons. The process is the same. Have fun!! Get creative!! Edit: Here is a photo of this headboard in the room for which it was created

Want to see the whole before and after of this bedroom?Click here! ====================================================================

Added a layer of 1" thick foam with a few staples. If you are adding nailhead trim be sure to leave a border! Your nailheads will NOT go through the foam.

Cover the entire board in batting. I used a Extra Loft Queen Size Quilt batting.... I told you I wanted this thing thick!

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