Dude, you can make that...: Headboard Out of My Mind

Get excited guys, because this month I actually made a craft someone would want to replicate!
I'm somewhat of a hippie, so even though I've been living at my apartment for 3 years I still don't have a bed frame or a headboard. I've seen so many projects of people that created their own headboards and thought, "Dude, I can totally make that."

So for the past few weeks I've been gathering supplies such as discounted particle board and 2x4's from Home Depot, batting and green high-density foam from Joann Fabric's (My alma mater), and pretty buttons and fabric from my family.

The measurements for all these materials are as follows:
1 piece particle board, 2' x 4' (Discounted because the edges were a bit squiffy)
2 boards about 1/2" thick and 4' long (Also discounted because they were a teeny bit warped)
1 inch thick high density foam, 2' x 4'
2 pieces of high loft batting, 54" x 36"
Giant piece of fabric (You'll want at least 5-6 inches on every side of the piece your making for stapling purposes)
Staple gun and 3/8" staples (In retrospect I would've gotten at least 1/2" staples, it was hard to get all that fabric underneath them)
Upholstery needle, upholstery thread, buttons, skewers (To anchor the thread on the back of the headboard), drill and drill bits (Thanks to Aaron Corp.)...

I prepped the headboard by measuring and drilling where I wanted my tufts to go. I decided to go small and only have 6. If you don't have a drill you can use a pegboard for the base, but they only come in 1/4" thickness and it makes it a bit wobbly. Drill the hole as small as you can, because when you start pulling and anchoring things through them it just makes the whole situation stronger.

Aaron Corp. has a whole mess of mystery items in the basement including a popcorn maker, crockpot and entire drill set! Who knew?

This is called measuring... You do it twice...

Zombie sneakers.

Baby Bell, inspecting the materials. Clearly they did not pass code.

I ironed my fabric and laid it out on the biggest work surface I have, my living room floor.

Don't worry, I swept.

Then the batting and the foam:

Predators was playing in the background for this whole project.

I folded the edges of the batting underneath to give the edges of the headboard a little more cushion.

I laid the board on top of the whole shabang and started folding the fabric in to be stapled to the back.

Just like making a sandwich.

Please ignore my ashen claws.

This was the fun part, I've always wanted to ignore the safety warnings on a staple gun!

From there a neat little tuck and fold to create the corners. I ended up having so much batting that the corners puffed out a little bit more than I wanted, so you just have to experiment with it to get it the way you like. If the batting is giving you too much trouble feel free to cut out a square right a the corner to lessen the bulk.
I didn't fold the corner all the way in like wrapping a present because that made the corner waaaay too bulky, so instead I went with this semi fold.

This was more like making a gift than a sandwich.

I try to include my hands in posts as little as possible, but sometimes it's unavoidable.

Staple, staple, staple allll over that beast. No such thing as too many staples. Try to staple farther away from the edges so that if you need to tighten the edges up in any sections, you can pull the fabric taut and just staple a little closer to the edge to even the whole thing out.

Whose couch is that? Jeez some people are just peegs...

I then screwed my small boards to the back to prop up the headboard. I did some rough measurements, but in all honesty I haven't gotten my bedframe yet so I'll have to change the height eventually. You can always unscrew them and try again.

This is going to be my picket sign. I'm not sure what I'm protesting yet.

Recognize that gorgeous creature in the background?

Now for the sewing portion of our day. I almost stopped right here because I thought this looked nice, but Aaron Corp. encouraged me to keep going because it would look nicer. And if a guy tells you something will look nicer, I think it's generally a good idea to keep going.

These are the hors d'oeuvres at the Hearst mansion.

Broke up some skewers and found some pretty buttons. Using my upholstery needle and thread, I sewed each button to the front of the headboard through the holes I had made earlier.

Bing.

Bang.

Boom.

I used the skewers to tie the knot around to keep the buttons really sunk in on the front of the headboard. Some people use staples to anchor the thread, doing a lot of criss-crossing on the back to get them really tight. But I was so tired of using that gun at this point I just did this instead. It's easier if you tape the skewers to the board while you're tying the knot. It'll be easy to redo if the buttons ever fall out as well.