My daughter has just bought her first home and like us all she wants it to look nice straight away.  But her budget does not allow her to do it all at once, so Mom to the rescue. 

She needed a headboard for her bedroom.  I had recently seen the barn quilts on Pinterest and thought they would look great as a headboard.  Her bed is a king-size so that is going to be a big barn quilt headboard, but my thinking went “go big or go home”.

How to make a barn Quilt headboard

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I jumped into this project both feet first thinking what is the worst that can happen and it went downhill from there.   I will share my tips on what worked for me and also what went wrong while making this project, so you can learn from my mistakes.

Measure out your headboard Base

To make a headboard for an Australian king size bed, the headboard needs to be at least 1900 mm x 900 mm.  I used a piece of 12 mm plywood for this.  The barn quilt pieces were all cut from 12 mm plywood.  Measure out the headboard size and mark with a pencil.  In my head, I knew I was going to make my own design and it would be divided into 8 sections. Divide out your sections equally first, then add a pencil mark from corner to corner both ways and one through the middle.  This will help you keep the design straight.

Prepare your wood for your Barn Quilt

This project is a great way to use up all your offcuts of wood. Or another great way to use them up is to make simple planters.  I used plywood that I got for free off a building site.  I cut away the damaged wood and using an orbital sander, I sanded the wood smooth.  It was easier to do this step now rather than when it is cut up into smaller pieces and harder to hold.  Cut your wood into 5 cm width pieces, with whatever saw you have.  I used a table saw.

It does not matter if your wood is warped, once it is cut into the smaller pieces you do not notice it.  I started by cutting my shaped pieces, I used a new drop saw. Not reading the instructions I just jumped in and started cutting 45-degree angles into the wood.  It is very important to keep all the angles the same so all the pieces fit together like a puzzle.

Set up your saw

This was my first and biggest mistake. I did not check that the laser on the saw was set to zero, it was only after cutting lots of wood that I noticed.  I got my son to set the laser correctly and then carried on cutting only to notice the laser was set to the wrong side of the blade.  The laser was then changed again.  So as you can imagine I now had a big mixture of wood that was cut at different “45-degree angles”.  So Check that your laser is set correctly before you start or you will end up with gaps as I did.

Set up a stop block on your saw so all your pieces are cut the same. Clamp a scrap piece of wood to the fence which you can use as a guide when cutting your wood.  It will also help to add a pencil mark on the fence which you can later rub out.  Don’t get lazy and try and cut 2 pieces of wood at once as I did, which resulted in a piece of flying wood just missing my face from a kickback.

Sort your wood out into sizes ready to make your design.

Design your Barn quilt

This step can take a while to do if you want to have a design unique to you, which I did.  I started with the most popular design in the middle as a guide and made up the design from there.  You only need to design one block then duplicate that design into the other blocks. Using the lines as a guide to keep the design straight, move the pieces around until you are happy with the design.

I did not get to fancy with the shapes that I used, choosing to stay with squares, triangles and parallelograms of different lengths.

Once I was happy with the design, I glued the centre wood in place using a hot glue gun.  I painted the wood with a roller which did not work very well. The paint filled in all the gaps changing the look of the design, so paint them before they are glued into place. I found hot glue was sufficient to keep the blocks in place.

Seeing the join gaps is part of the effect, to get mine back after painting it away.  I used a ruler and pen to draw the gaps back in the paint.

You can see the gaps mentioned above in this image.  But I was in too deep to start again. Once I was happy with the complete panel it was as easy as duplicating the pattern using the pieces from the first one as a guide.

Painting the wood pieces

It will be easier to paint all the wood at the same time.  Using a hot glue gun, glue the first “V” in place then added as many as you like underneath.  Then glue the last 2 in place to stop them all from moving.  Using a paint roller you can paint them all in a few seconds.  Once you have done your 2 coats of paint you can use a chisel to loosen the wood glued down. This saved so much time. 

I changed the design for the 4 outer blocks to get rid of some of the gaps caused by my laser issues.

Cutting out the headboard

Once the design is all glued down and finished, It was time to trim up the edges. I added some masking tape to the cut line to stop any splintering of the wood. I made a fence by using a scrap piece of wood clamped to the headboard and cut the edges straight using a circular saw.

Making the barn quit headboard frame

I used some scrap wood to make a frame for the headboard. I cut the wood to size and used a wood router with a round-over bit to round the edges. The wood was painted and glued and nailed into place.

When flipping the headboard over to add the legs I noticed that the headboard would bow when lifted.  To stop this from happening I cut a strip of wood and nailed it across the back of the headboard.  This worked great

Adding the legs to the headboard

The height of the mattress and the base was 90 cm.  I cut wood legs the full height of the headboard and added the 90 cm.  Which were then glued and nailed to the back of the headboard.  And that was the headboard complete.  This project definitely did not go to plan, but that is how we learn.  It still turned out great warts and all. Even the dust on the legs I missed when cleaning.

If you are looking for more unique ideas for your bedroom decor.  Check out this Beauty bar made from an old desk or this headboard I made from old kitchen cupboard doors.

If you are not feeling brave enough to tackle this project but like the look.  Check out this simple tutorial on how to paint this geometric design into this old headboard on its way to the landfill.

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