I wanted a pinboard inside the lid of the box. Partly to add colour but also to up the practicality of the box. So first step. A bit of wood for the base of the pinboard. Unfortunately our local, and truly amazing, wood shop closed after 70 years due to retirement. They used to cut exactly what I wanted to the perfect size, usually telling me what I needed for the job to get it right. All other places may cut it but charge for a full sheet. I was not going to go for that unnecessarily expensive option.
A week later I still had no solution. I had also realised that the lid is really heavy so adding more wood wasn't going to help much. Eventually I had an idea which would either work or be a total disaster. Using cardboard as a base.
Cut two pieces of cardboard to fit the inside of the box:
Tape them together to make it as sturdy as possible:
Added a small amount of wadding and cut the fabric (I splashed out and used some of Jorja Wilkinson's Fish fabric) about an inch and a half bigger all round than the base.
Top tip. I know this is too obvious for words but but do iron the fabric before you use it.
Now for the slightly tricky part for getting the fabric looking right.(I didn't help myself by having a pattern that needed to be straight) Start by taping the fabric into place temporarily, this way you can change things easily if they are wrong.
Having got the fabric into roughly the right place put 3 staples in each edge to hold it in place. (This was thin enough to use a normal stapler. A staple gun would be easier though.) A gentle tug on the fabric helps to hold it in place make it all nice and tight. Don't pull too hard though as the cardboard will buckle.
Once the fabric is in place staple like mad around the edges till there is no way anything will budge!
Time to tackle the corners. A couple of extra hands is good for this:
Start by snipping the excess fabric. (It's better to trim a few times to get it right than to cut too much off!):
Hold the corner part of the fabric down (see below) and staple it in place:
Take one of the two flap of fabric you will now have and fold it down. One will lay flatter than the other so use that one:
Staple!
Take the other flap of fabric and fold it into place:
Staple!
Snip off any excess fabric and you are getting there! Actually you could stop at this point as it is already a very pretty and functional pinboard.
Time to attach the ribbon. I went for some dark blue cotton tape and got measuring. This one of those annoying things where it does matter if it's wrong so it's worth laying it out a few times to decide where you want it to go. It is also worth pinning the ribbon to the board to get it properly in place.
Once the ribbons are in place it's time to staple them to the back. Take time over this as it will bug you if it's wrong. Then trim the excess.
The final stage was to attach it to the box lid by using upholstery pins (I happened to have loads of these from an old project.)where the ribbons crossed.
If you are not doing it for a box some drawing pins would work just as well. Also this would look fab put into an old frame to hang on the wall.
All in all not too tricky and the only real expense for me was the fabric which was naughty but worth it and I didn't need that much of it.
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