DIY Quilt-Inspired Wooden Wall Art

 DIY Quilt-Inspired Wooden Wall Art

While looking through a Pottery Barn catalog I noticed a cool piece of wooden wall art in the shape of a star that looked very much like a quilt block.  It just so happened that we had a stark wall begging for some DIY.

My husband and I set to work.

We:

1.  Planned a straightforward herringbone pattern.

2.  Measured the space on the wall we were targeting.

3.  Bought supplies:

• long planks of wood (1x3)
• a thin base backing board
• liquid nails
• polyurethane
• bunch of the tiniest cans of stain.  (We decided on 5: black, gray, dark brown, red, blonde.)

4.  Cut the blocks to size- made a stop block on the saw table to ensure consistent cuts and speed up the process.  We checked after every 10 or 15 cuts to make sure the blocks were still coming out exactly the right size.

5.  Lightly sanded the edges.

6.  Stained, dried, applied coat of wipe on polyurethane.

7.  Arranged them just so.

8.  Checked studs on wall and marked backing board where we would drill through it and into the wall.

9.  Glued each block on one at a time (we didn't glue any blocks over mounting marks--left a perfectly-sized empty space there for now).

10.  Let dry.

(We considered adding a border, but preferred just painting the edges black.)

11.  Screwed the whole thing straight into the studs in the wall.

12.  Placed remaining blocks in spaces over the screws.  They were a bit proud of the wall because of the screws, so we drilled shallow holes into the back of the blocks so the blocks would fit flush to the wall. (No glue was necessary with these final few.  This way we can simply remove them to unscrew our art from the wall.). 

Voila!  DIY quilt inspired wall art!

 

Clearly the possibilities are endless! It was a very fun project.  Happy holidays to you all!

molly

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