I picked up an old headboard off of Craigslist because I fell head-over-heals with the shape.  See pics below?.  Can you blame me?

If you can’t get your hands on a amazingly curvey head board, there are tutorials explaining how to cut one.  A post by Jennifer from Dimples and Tangles is perhaps my favorite.  My tutorial, however, focuses on how to cover a preexisting headboard.  So once you’ve procured your headboard by any legal means necessary, start HERE!

If there is a large pattern, line the entire piece up on the headboard the way that you like it to look. You can see that I wanted my jaguars running down the center of the bed.  Mark it, and then flip the entire thing upside down with the fabric right-side down and with the headboard on top.  With a pen, trace along the curve of the padded headboard.  Error on the side of “slightly too much fabric” vs “too little fabric”.  Flip everything back over and double check that you like the fit.

Then pull out the scissors and begin cutting ?.

Triple check that you did a great job.

Then match ends up and fold over.  See that diagonal line I ironed ?? Sew right along that angle, trim with scissors, and iron flat.  Ta da!

It is recommended that a zipper foot be used for this step, but don’t stress if you cant’ find yours.  It will still work, though maybe not quite as well.

If all of this is too tricky, the second option is to buy the welting cord and doublefold bias tape. Iron the tape out flat, fold it over the cable and sew.

Now, there are two ways to go about the next step.

Option 1: People generally measure the depth of their headboard and add about 4 ish inches.  That may be somewhere around  7-8 inches wide.  Cut a strip that is long enough to cover the circumference of your headboard plus a little extra. Then put right sides together with the cord in between and pin.  First pin a few inches to replicate the seam and then open it up.  If it looks righ, and you’ve got the hang of it, go for it.

Option 2: (The one I usually use :). I broke option 1 into two parts: Top fabric and piping and then sew on the side piece.  Twice the time, yes, but I wanted to double check that it looked correct.

So, first line up the end of the cord with the end of the headboard fabric. Pin and sew the seam all of the way around just the top fabric.  Then, double check that it fits (right side up covering the headboard) and pin the side fabric all of the way around and sew the 7-8 inch  fabric strip to the first seam (right sides together).

The reason I went with option 2 was to give myself the control to match up some of the jaguars on the two fabrics.

This is where it starts to get FUN!  I propped a big box under my heavy headboard so that I could maneuver around while stapling.  I lined up the grain of fabric parallel to the sides of the bed.  I also ensured that the jaguars looked centered..  Additionally, I played with the fabric to guarantee the piping was in about the same place all of the way around the perimeter.

Once you are ready to staple, sink a few at the top, bottom, and then each side to ensure your fabric stays lined up. Then continue this pattern.  Sink a few staples in a row and then rotate.  You DON’T want to staple an entire side before moving on.  It’s more effective to staple about 6-8 inches at a time and then double check your straightness, restretch if necessary, and rotate to another part of the bed.

The trickies part of the curvey headboard is…you guessed it! The curves. I found it helpful to make some cuts pointing and radiating towards the curves of the bed.  See below.  Just make sure that you don’t cut too close to the headboard.

Thank you so very much for joining me on my custom headboard tutorial. If you found this helpful, feel free to pin and share the heck out of it. Also, don’t forget to follow me on

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