Creating Fabric Wall Panels and Race Car Picture for a Toddler Room

Last year, we moved E into a “big boy” room. We knew Baby R was on the way and we would soon need the nursery for him. We took this as an opportunity to completely redo our spare bedroom and make it into a room that a 2-year old would love. 

My husband said he had always wanted a race car themed room when he was young, so we decided to go in that direction for E. I didn’t want to do some sort of ready-made design, but instead I wanted something unique, something that I designed myself.

We bought a race car bed, a play carpet with a road on it, and some checkered flags for along the border. I wanted some wall decorations too, but I wasn’t finding anything that really jumped out at me — that was until I found a great license plate print fabric.

The minute I saw this license plate fabric I knew it would be perfect to use for fabric wall panels. The best part is that the panels take less than 30 minutes to make — which is important when you have two small children running around!

Making Covered Fabric Wall Panels

What you will need:

• Fabric of your choice
• Staple gun
• Scissors
• Frame for stretched canvas
• Ruler

The frame that I ended up using was actually a 12×12 stretched canvas picture that I found on sale for $3. I decided that I would go ahead and use these pictures and just recover them since they were way cheaper than what I could buy the frame for at a craft store. I recommend using the frames for stretched canvas as it will give the panels some depth. However, I have also heard of people having success making these fabric wall panels with pieces of thick cardboard, although I’ve never tried it myself.

Start by spreading out the fabric you wish to use and turning the frame so that the side you want to be the front is facing the table. Note: Since I am using a fabric that has straight lines in it I was careful to make sure everything lined up correctly. If you are using a patterned piece of fabric this isn’t as important.

Trim the fabric so that you have about 3 inches of excess on all sides. This will be important when you wrap the fabric around the edges.

After trimming the fabric, take one of the edges and pull it tight around to the back of the frame. Use the staple gun to staple the fabric to the frame. Put three or four staples along the length of the frame.

For the corners, I folded the fabric similar to how you would wrap a present. I tucked the corners under and put a staple on the side and one on the top to hold it tight. After stapling the corner I went ahead and stapled along the edge again, repeating this process for all of the corners and sides.

Do the same process with the other panel.

After you have completed all of this, you will have a wrapped fabric wall panel that you can place on any wall. Just attach a frame wire or a hanger to the back and you are ready to go!

Creating the Race Car Picture

I decided to add in a cute race car picture to complete the wall decor. I found an adorable race car printable online called “Start Your Engines” (and it’s only $0.99). It’s actually a cutting file, but let’s be honest, with two small kids I don’t have time to deal with cutting out small pieces of paper! In fact, I think my Cricut has a nice thick layer of dust on it!

What I ended up doing was just printing out the preview template for the picture on our color printer. I really wanted the picture to stand out against the white frame I was using. To do this, I cut out a red matte for the frame. This gave it that perfect pop I was looking for!

I flanked the picture on each side with one of the fabric panels. They look so cute on the wall above E’s bed. 

I’m planning on making lots more race car-themed decorations for E’s room in the future, but in the meantime, I am really happy with how these turned out!

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