Recovering a “Vintage” Headboard

A lot of us old foggies were waterbed fans and saw no reason to give up our beautiful waterbed frames when we switched to gel foam mattresses. Our waterbed frame is beautifully made of sturdy oak. Yes I am going to say it, “They don’t make them like this anymore!”

One feature of our “vintage” waterbed frame is a 3″x9″x35″ cushion which hides a large cubbyhole at the top of each side of the bed.

You may remember that I completed a new quilt for the master bed earlier this year, which means that the headboard is now out of sync with the quilt. The old coverings were pieced to resemble the quilt piecing, but this time I wanted to do some applique.

Rummaging through my applique book “Wildbirds of North America”, I found a hummingbird and iris pattern. By now I think everyone knows that hummingbirds are a favorite of mine. But I wanted each side of the headboard to have its unique pattern and found a beautiful wood duck for the opposite side. The patterns needed modifying to fit my headboard size.

I discovered that drafting my own pattern was much more challenging than using a carefully thought out design! Also, I find it annoying that designer and fabric makers tend to focus on the male of the species due to their bright coloring. What about the female? This required some research to find photos of females of both species so that both could populate my applique. Again, modifications were needed to the pattern color schemes.

Another requirement was to use some of the quilt fabric in the designs. The light gold was used for sand and other elements included in the plants and ducks.

Recovering the headboards.

The end result, while not as “matched” to the quilt as I had originally planned, is fun and restful. Quilts, even little ones, have a tendency to take on lives of their own.

Happy quilting! Lennea