Mission Accomplished

I bought this handmade Indian patchwork blanket a zillion years ago at an estate sale in California, because I thought it was stunning. Fast forward 15-20 years— it came to France from the US because I never found a use for it there, then recently brought it to Spain, thinking it could create a Moroccan/Bohemian type of vibe somewhere in the house here.

I thought of hanging it as a wall hanging to act as a headboard in the larger guest bedroom, but it’s humid here by the sea and I had nightmares of mushrooms growing behind it in our absence!

So I threw it on the queen-size bed in the smaller guest bedroom and thought it looked good. But it was weird—very heavy, not at all soft, and too delicate in case kids ever stayed in there. And so I came up with the idea to make a big tall headboard and use it as my upholstery fabric. Hmm, in a country where I don’t speak the language and don’t know where to source anything…courageous or stupid? But I was on a mission, so step aside!!!

I hated the furniture set that came with the house in this bedroom (still working on replacing those nightstands) and wanted to come up with something beautiful. I was looking for something with a hint of Morocco and decided to make a tall and curvy headboard, using my blanket as the fabric. To get the tall height without hitting those sconces, I settled on a curvy stepped shape to not only add some exoticism, but cleverly ‘miss’ the lamps.

[On a tangent here, but if you’re not familiar with the way they light houses in Spain, just let me tell you how many wall sconces I removed in this house. They don’t ‘do’ ceiling lights, so there were wall sconces with ugly shiny silver fixtures with blinding halogen bulbs literally everywhere. The two sconce electrical outlets in this room were the two I DIDN’T destroy. And these lamps I put up were supposed to be for the guest bath upstairs, but stuck out too far from the wall for the door to open fully — an entire blog dedicated to my jewel of a teeny guest bath still to come. But I digress.]

And so my project began by asking our neighbor and good friend, Willi, for some help. With a cardboard template from me, he agreed to buy the wood and cut it out for me. Then he took me to a local upholstery shop, where we picked up a huge 2 meter square piece of thick foam. They had applied the fluffy Dacron (without me requesting them to do so).

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I am fortunate to have a large empty room downstairs in which to do projects like this (formerly a huge broken sauna lived in there). So once Willi delivered the wood backing cutout, I laid it down on my foam and drew around the shape.

I needed to cut out the shape of the foam without cutting through the Dacron, because it needed to wrap around the outside of the foam to soften the edges. I used an old bread knife to cut the foam, stopping just when I got to the Dacron and it worked very well. Then I very carefully peeled the extra foam off the Dacron, to preserve the integrity of the Dacron as much as possible.

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With the headboard face down, I started to staple around the edges with the electric stapler I borrowed from Willi. After the first staples were in, I secured it with more staples and cut off the excess.

Then I had to decide how to arrange the blanket on the piece. I had a trolley on wheels left by the previous owners (for the sauna paraphernalia, no doubt) and carefully hefted the heavy piece to balance on the small table.

I then arranged the piece the way I wanted it and started to secure it by wrapping it firmly around the board and stapling it to the back. All the kneeling and crawling involved to staple the headboard balanced on this little table made my ass SO SORE the next day! And I must admit, I felt like a criminal cutting this fabulous fabric art piece.

Once the blanket was well attached, I flipped the whole piece back over onto the floor and continued to staple it securely. When I was almost finished, the staple gun jammed. I could not get it fixed, so I immediately ordered another one from Amazon Prime. So, as antsy as I was to finish the project, I had to wait. But good ole Amazon Prime came the very next morning with my new stapler, and voilà, I got ‘er done.

Then Theo and I carried the beast to the bedroom, but still needed to roll out the rug, so we took apart the bed and look what I found? Now understand that I’ve already given away enough bedding for a small village, and there were MORE duvets, pillows, and sheets in the storage under the bed. Ugh. Think I will just pretend I didn’t see them…

I have some supplies left over for another day and hope to make some throw pillows from the scraps.

And here is the final product. Still need to think about decorative pillows and I’m looking for a turquoise throw for the end of the bed, but I’m pretty proud of my little ‘rainy day’ project.