Book Sling Tutorial

I am so excited that we are finally making some progress on baby boy's nursery! I made these book slings the other day & thought I'd show them to you! I didn't take pictures while I was making them because I planned on following this awesome tutorial that I found at pinterest. However, once I started reading it I realized that it sounded too complicated for my little non-sewing-brain... so I just made it up as I went along {using the least amount of cutting possible} and this is what I came up with. They are not as fancy as all the other book slings floating around pinterest but I love them & they were so easy! {even for me, who can ONLY sew straight lines... that are usually not even straight}

The easiest part about making these is that I made the slings before putting any of the brackets into the walls so that it didn't matter what size I made them. For this project, I purchased 1 1/2 yards of fabric from Joann.  I pretty much just cut my fabric in half to make them even. The dimensions were 32 inches long x 24 inches high {all unfolded, so when folded over the sling will hang down around 6 inches}. *see picture below*

I ironed the edges over to make a 1 inch seam on each side so that my sling would be 2 1/2 feet wide. I don't have one of those fancy tools to make your hems perfect, so  I just sprayed homemade cornstarch and folded/ironed along the line of the stripes to make it straight. I pinned & sewed about 1/8" from the edge. 

 Once the edges were sewed over, I simply folded the fabric in half {printed sides together} and did my best to sew a straight line from one side to the other. I may not be explaining it well, so please ask if you have questions... but it really was as simple as that. 

So, instead of making a loop for each rod to go through {like the original tutorial}  you are basically just sewing the sides over & then creating a big "muff" for the curtain rods. 

The hardest part was hanging the brackets {but thankfully, hubby did that}. I sewed the slings first, so we just put them on dowel rods & held it up to the wall to see where the brackets need to go. 

I got these brackets from Lowes for $5 each. They are in the curtain section and take it from me, they do not sell these at every hardware store... so just go to Lowes. We never shop at Lowes so I went to Home Depot to see if they had them, but no luck & I ended up wandering Lowes anyway! 

 I also got the dowel rods at Lowes, but they only had 4 foot long rods, so for my project I had to buy 4 separate ones and cut them down to about 2 3/4 feet {they were almost $2/each}. But they do carry the same width at joann for $1 cheaper, but they were only 2 1/2 feet... so depending on your size you may want to look around. I cheated & just painted the ends with craft paint. I don't plan on adding anything to the ends, although you could add some decorative knobs if you wanted. 

To assemble the slings, you just loop the entire thing around both of the rods. 

I put the seam right on top so it rests in between each rod. 

Then, just push down the middle of the fabric & your books will sit right in there! 

The main difference from all of the other slings out there is when you look at it from the sides you can see the double layer of fabric. But once you have the books in the sling, you really can't tell much at all. 

I love how they turned out & I have to admit, I really like that they look almost seamless from the front. 

I hope this tutorial wasn't too confusing... sewing really is not my thing! So here is proof that if I can do it, you can too! Otherwise, if you are more ambitious than me here is the link again to the original post. It truthfully is probably not all that difficult... I am just really bad at following directions! 

linking up here: 

sugar bee crafts: take a look tuesday

today's creative blog: get your craft on

tip junkie: tip me tuesday

weekend bloggy reading: serenity now

sundae scoop: i heart naptime

saturday at seven: it's overflowing