Thursday, October 7, 2010

Fabric Canvas Tutorial

#7 - take two.
Well here is my second attempt at posting this tutorial.  If you missed what happened first time round, feel free to read about it here.

So I have been asked on several occasions to do a quick tutorial on how to make fabric canvases.  It is super easy and only takes 10-15 mins per canvas.  I whipped up a few today and took piccies whilst making them.  This is only my second tutorial, my first was only done yesterday :)  I am not the best at explaining but hopefully the pictures will make it easier.

What you need:
Canvas
Fabric
Staple gun
Lots of staples!!
Scissies (for some reason this is what I call scissors, just go with it ok)

First you need to cut your fabric out.  I just cut it roughly, leaving a few inches all around.  You don't want too little, or else it is hard to secure everything properly and you don't want it tooooo big or else it gets bulky. 

First of all you need to turn your canvas upside down on the fabric.  Fold up one flap, and secure with staples on the corners.  Make sure it is nice and taunt (you're going to hear that work alot in the next few minutes).
Flip your canvas around and staple the other two corners.. making sure it is TAUNT!  Pulling everything taunt is sooo important in making this.  You want a nice smooth flat finish at the end. 
Pop a few staples on the sides where the flaps are stapled up to hold it in place for the next few steps.

Now for the corners.  You will need to fold up a mini flap and staple it in place, and then you fold up the rest...

...like this.  And then staple it down.
You're going to need to do the other three corners.  Add some staples in the middle sections to keep it all taunt as you work your way around.  

Then go crazy with the staple gun.  Fill in all the gaps pulling everything nice and taunt into place.  Stretchy fabric needs lots of staples (the fabric used in this tutorial was super stretchy), but stiffer fabrics with no elastine won't need to many.

Lastly you want to trim up the fabric.  I do it really scrappy as you can see on the top right :P  But you can make it all nice and neat if you want to.

So that is it in a nutshell.  If you have any questions feel free to ask, and I'd like to officially apologise if I have thoroughly confused you.  It is likely to have happened.

I'll have to take some pics of the canvases once I hang them.  I had such a busy schedule today and didn't get around to hanging them.  I also made two other canvases to go with this one so they should cheer up my lounge room nicely!

Now I need to find another project to do!!

Here's to a more successful attempt at posting a tutorial!! Hooray!!

Have fun crafting!  See ya tomorrow!

Christy

2 comments:

Photography said...

:-) Just replied to you lol!

About Me said...

ohhhh how much fun and you make it look so EASY!!! I'm sure I can make it seem much harder than that! I love fabric canvases but I have horrid 1950's wallpaper and am just too scared to put ANYTHING on it! One day I will have a nice house (which only needs nice, clean PAINTED walls to fall into that category for me!!!) and then I will hang these to my hearts content! Awesome tute though - very easy to understand! XXX