100th Post - Framed Fabric Tutorial

Wow, one-hundred posts! I'm glad that I noticed. We'll celebrate with a tutorial that I was going to post anyway.

I recently moved to a new place so I've been doing a lot of unpacking, arranging and decorating. I also reacquired some things that my parents had stored for me. Included were three framed posters. I chose the posters when I was about 15 years old and my Dad made the gorgeous wooden frames. There's no question that I get my "I can make that" confidence from my parents (and grandparents too). In fact, when I was very little, my room was decorated with fabric stretched over wooden frames.
These frames are a beautiful golden stained wood. The posters are still nice but I have tired of them. My solution was to find fabric with a large-scale print and frame it. I found these two fabrics at IKEA and bought one yard of each. The black and white peanut shapes are from the LENA collection. The red line drawing of leaves and branches is called Stockholm Blad. IKEA has a lot of other large-scale prints ideal for framing in large frames.

Supplies:
Fabric
Scissors
Stapler
Frame
Cardboard or other board to fit in frame (this is what you'll staple the fabric to)
Iron and Ironing Board
4 Straight pins or Safety pins

Step 1:
Iron the fabric.

Step 2:
Arrange the fabric on the board to find a pleasing arrangement. I put the fabric on the bias (diagonal to the edges) to find what I wanted. Mark the corners by placing a pin in each corner. (Iron again if necessary.)

Step 3:
Place fabric face down on work surface or floor. Using pins as a guide, put board in place on fabric.

Step 4:
Trim excess fabric away leaving a 2 to 3 inch border.

Step 5:
Starting in the middle and moving out to the corners, staple fabric to board. Smooth any wrinkles and staple opposite side, again working from the middle out and keeping fabric tight.
Step 6:
Cut excess fabric from corners to minimize bulk.
Step 7:
Staple two remaining sides. Fold corners in and staple.

Step 8:
Insert fabric "artwork" in frame and hang.

It was hard to photograph the frames because they kept reflecting but I'm pretty pleased with the result. Another method is to attach the fabric to a stretched canvas as seen here, from Real Simple magazine. Framed fabric also seen on Curbly.