Our new family room has high ceilings. On one side of the room is our floor to ceiling brick fireplace. The opposite wall is 11 ft high with a large open wall space between the windows. It needed a big and affordable focal point! I’ve always admired fabric wall hangings. My sister-in-law has several in her home that always catch my eye. This seemed like the perfect budget-friendly solution for this space.
I fell in love with a large-scale Marimekko fabric called Kaiku. It’s a gorgeous birch tree print with bright colors. To purchase 1 repeat of the pattern I needed a little under 3 yards for a cost of about $144. The fabric is available on their website: https://us.marimekko.com/fabric/kaiku-cotton-fabric-053691-560 . Their closest store is in Cambridge, MA which is about an hour from our house. I couldn’t resist going to see the fabric in person which was a treat because they have so many gorgeous fabrics there!! A really fun field-trip if you are in the Boston area.
After reading a few tutorials on-line and getting a few tips from my sister-in-law, it seemed most affordable to build the wood frame instead of purchasing a pre-cut canvas stretching kit on-line (There are tons to choose from on amazon.com).
At the local lumber yard, I purchase primed, 3′ by 8 ” pieces of wood to build the frame. They kindly cut the pieces to the correct size for me. This was less than $20. At the fabric store I bought a few yards of white curtain liner fabric that’s 54″ wide. (My SIL suggested attaching a fabric layer under the Marimekko fabric to make sure it wasn’t see-through when hung on the wall.) The curtain liner fabric was $15.
Building the frame and attaching the 2 layers of fabric took about an hour. I used an upholstery staple gun for all of it. I’m not sure why I spent 3 months looking at the Marimekko fabric sitting on my desk before I tackled this project. Seemed a little intimidating I guess!
#marimekko, #framedfabric, #largewallhanging