DIY Upholstered Tufted Headboard

We have lived in our current home for nearly two years. When we first moved in, one of the first things I wanted to do was make a headboard for our room. I am pretty sure I even bought the plywood right around the time we moved in.

Well. Nearly two years later: The headboard is done!

And I LOVE it. It makes our room feel so much more grown up and complete. And every time I walk by my bed, I want to sit down and read a book or take a nap. It just looks so inviting.

I made this headboard as part of the Week 3 challenge over at One Month to Win It, which was to use another blogger's tutorial. Unfortunately, I didn't make it through to the finals, but I did get a sweet new headboard! There are tons of great headboard tutorials out there, but I ended up following the incredibly detailed and helpful tutorial from Centsational Girl along with some helpful hints from the tutorial at Green Your Decor.

Materials/Tools I Used:

• piece of plywood
• large piece of 2 inch foam
• batting
• about two yards of upholstery fabric (I got it on clearance for one dollar a yard)
• staple gun
• jig saw
• electric carving knife
• drill
• cover buttons
• embroidery floss
• upholstery needle
• pliers

I really wanted to do a curvy headboard, but doing an intricate shape was intimidating. I loved Centsational Girl's simple shape, so I copied that idea. I only had to make one template for both curved cut-outs. 

After tracing the template on both sides, the hubs cut out the corners using a jig saw. I wish I was cool enough to say I did this myself, but I am a bit chicken when it comes to power tools. I hope to get over that soon.

This is a good time to drill holes for tufting. Just mark where you want your buttons to be and drill away. My buttons are spaced 12 inches apart.

Next, I flipped the plywood onto my foam and traced the cut-outs. I used an electric carving knife to cut the foam, and it cut through it like but-tah. Brilliant.

I stacked the batting, foam, and then plywood. Pull the batting over the plywood and staple it down. Then I did the same with the fabric.

The corners can be a bit tricky. I just pulled and folded until I got a nice sharp corner.

If you did not want to tuft the headboard, at this point you would be done! The tufting was probably the most difficult part of this whole project. The needle I had was really not long enough to go through the board, two inches of foam, batting, and fabric. This little difficulty lead to the discovery of my best tufting tip. If you are having a hard time pushing the needle through the headboard or finding the drilled hole in the board, try grasping the needle with a pair of pliers.

I secured my buttons using washers, which was pretty easy to do and worked very well. Because my headboard was tall enough standing on the ground, I decided not to secure it to the wall even though I initially bought some brackets to do so.

After returning the brackets, the total project cost about 65 dollars. Not too shabby for a king-sized headboard, right?

Did I mention I love it? I really, really do. What are you getting off your to-make list?