I have a project featured over on the Making Memories blog today and thought I would share the complete tutorial on making the embroidery hoop bulletin boards here. I have seen these floating around blog land for quite a while now and love how they turned out! They really are such a cute and easy project! I wish I would have done them sooner. Originally I wanted to do them for Emily's room but I don't have the wall space in there so I opted to put them on the wall right inside our front door.
I figure that I will change out the photos every now and then and maybe even change up the little bits and pieces that I have hanging on them over time as well.
You could easily just do this same project but without the batting but I wanted mine to have a bulletin board functionality so that is why I added it in. I have also seen these done with cork behind the fabric so that is an option as well. I just went with what I already had on hand.
Starting with the top left image and working our way across and down, here are the steps:
1. Choose your hoops and fabric. I went with a variety of sizes and picked fabric that I already had on hand. In normal "Maggie" fashion I picked random colors and patterns to mix and match. Also I took my hoops out back and gave them a quick coat of white spray paint first. (A note on the paint - the wood is very porous and so the paint seemed to soak right in and I never could get it to coat very well. It also took a while to dry on this type of wood. You may try painting them with a brush and acrylic paint and see if that works better. In the end mine sort of took on a whitewash finish rather than a super opaque finish but I like it just the same.)
2. Cut a square of batting and a square of fabric to fit each hoop. You want the squares to be a little larger than the hoops like I have shown here.
3. Layer the batting and fabric over the smaller inside hoop and fit it into the larger hoop (just like you would normally do if you were using the hoops like they were intended.) Be sure to pull the fabric taut and smooth out any wrinkles. You can also loosen and then tighten the metal fastener on the top to help with this step.
4. Turn the whole thing over so it is upside down and trim off some of the batting and fabric. Leave about 1/2 - 1 inch overhang so you have enough to tuck down and glue in place.
5. First use hot glue to glue down the batting to the inside of the hoop. Then use hot glue to glue the fabric down on top of the batting. Be careful with your fingers because it can burn even through the fabric. I used the edge of my scissors to press down the batting and fabric as I was gluing. You can be super neat and tidy or you can just get it glued down and not worry about the look since it will be on the back anyway.
6. This is how the finished bulletin board hoop will look from the back with all the batting and fabric glued down.
And now you can have fun arranging them all and hanging them in your home! (Had a hard time getting a decent shot in this spot with the horrible lighting... my wall color is really not 3 different shades like it looks! :) )If you haven't checked out the Making Memories blog you can go there next to see the detail shots of the things I cut with the Slice and the other fun things I added to decorate some of them!
Have fun!
