My sister’s apt is totally a budget friendly project. We are trying to repurpose everything and this latest project was one of my favorites.

We knew we wanted to make a tufted headboard for her bed so me and Jon decided to go through our house/garage and see if there was anything we could use to make one.

Enter a crib rail that we picked up from the curb. We were going to originally paint it and use it as a trellis in our garden, but we used something from IKEA instead so it was just hanging around.

This was one of the easiest projects I have ever done! Here is what you need:

– One crib rail

-Twin size egg crate mattress pad: This is normally much cheaper than batting or foam at a craft store. I picked it up at Walmart for $10!

-Fabric: We used two different types:

-Twine or thread

-Button cover kit

-Staple Gun

Step 1: Staple egg crate mattress pad on crib rail:

Here it is all finished:

Step 2: Staple on fabric:

Step 3: Now if you don’t want tufting then you are all finished, but to add tufting here is what you do:

Play around with placement and decide if you want how many buttons you want in the rows/columns.

We wanted 4 buttons in a row so we took the measurement of the full length, which was 55” and divided it by 5 and got 11”.

Vertically we had 28 1/2” and we wanted two buttons per column so we divided by 3 and got 9 1/2”.

We then took two tape measurements and used one to measure every 11” and the other to measure the 9 1/2” and placed a small mark on the fabric to have a guide for our buttons.

Step 4: Take sewing needle (we used a larger doll needle, but a normal one would have worked as well) and poke through the fabric.

Step 5: Thread button:

Step 6: Due to the rails it is super easy to staple the thread (we used twine) into place.

Step 7: Enjoy! You are all finished:

Due to the rails the piece is really light and very easy to install. We just needed 4 regular nails (2” long) to hang it up!

My favorite part about this project is that you can take your baby’s crib and use then use it for their big kid bed by using the rail and making a vertical tufted headboard  similar to  this:

And then later on when they are ready for a teen bed you can use it horizontally like I did above with a full bed. You could also easily use liquid nails to glue a piece of wood or mdf to the side to make it larger for a queen or king.

Images via me. (So sorry for the soft focus on them I must have hit it by accident on my camera). Last image via Full House.