DIY fabric headboard

I've been waiting a long time to get halfway decent photos of this headboard. We made it back in our old house, and the sage green fabric didn't match the tan walls of our bedroom at all. But I had a vision of someday having a peaceful white bedroom and I knew the headboard would be exactly what we needed. It just took us 6 months to get there! But now we're finally to the point of putting our new bedroom together and it's glorious! As a bonus, this headboard tutorial is ridiculously easy. 

Materials needed:

plywood cut to length of your bed and height that you want

quilt batting - enough to cover plywood

fabric - enough to cover plywood 

two 2x4s cut to height of headboard legs (I got a 2x4x8 and cut it in half to create two 4 ft tall legs)

staple gun

First measure the width of your mattress. Then figure out if you want the headboard to extend past the mattress. Add those measurements together to get the total length to cut the plywood. For example, our mattress is 75 inches wide and I wanted the headboard to extend 3 inches on each side of the bed. So our total width is 75 + 6 = 81 inches wide. 

Then figure out how tall you want the headboard to be. This isn't critical because you can adjust the height on the legs. I wanted our headboard to be 32" tall not including the legs, so I made that the plywood height measurement. 

Take these measurements and cut the plywood to size (ours was 81x32"). If you don't have a saw, your friendly Home Depot or Lowes employees can cut it to size for you. 

Cut the 2x4s down to size depending on how tall you want the legs to be (again, I had a 2x4x8 and had them cut it in half so each leg was 4 feet tall). 

Lay the batting on the floor, making sure there are at least 2 layers of batting to cover the entire piece of wood. Lay the wood on top of the batting, pull the batting tight around the edges and staple in place. Make sure the batting lays flat and there isn't any bunching or pulling. 

Once the batting is in place, lay the fabric face down on the floor. Lay the batting covered headboard onto the fabric, again making sure there's no bunching or pulling.

Be careful and check the front often to make sure everything is straight, especially if you are using a fabric with a print. Don't be afraid to use a lot of staples to hold the fabric down. 

Now comes the time to determine how tall you want the headboard to be. I wanted mine to be a bit taller, so I calculated the total measurement of 52 inches. I subtracted the height of the plywood (32 inches) from the total height of 52 inches to get 20 inches. I marked 20 inches up on each 2x4 and lined that mark up with the bottom of the plywood. Then nail or screw the legs into the board, making sure the nails/screws don't go through to the other side and wreck your hard work! 

Stand the headboard up to make sure it's even and then haul it into your bedroom! You can screw it into your bed frame (as I intend to do eventually) or just lean it up against the wall for now. 

It was so ridiculously easy, I don't know why we put off making it for so long.  As you can see, we've also added bedside lights and curtains to our bedroom! Now just to add some artwork above the bed and I think our master bedroom is getting pretty close to being finished!