Make a fabric room divider to section off a room or hide a utility area, work space or anything you'd rather not have in full view. Use basic carpentry skills to make a simple frame of plywood, and coordinate the fabric with your decor for a custom-made look that will be both pretty and practical.
The Basics
Fabric room dividers consist of two or more frames with fabric stapled to them. The frames are hinged together and the divider is arranged in the room for optimum effect.
Typical room dividers or screens have three panels.You'll need to measure the area that you want to cover with the divider and decide how many panels you want to make. If you have to cover a large area, making two smaller units might be easier than constructing one large divider.
Materials
Use plywood to make the frame. If you're handy with a miter box, add decorative wooden trim after the panels are covered with fabric.
You can use any type of fabric for a room divider. Sheer or semi-sheer fabrics lend an airy, feminine feel but will have to be gathered in order to provide a screening effect. Heavier upholstery fabrics or home-decor fabrics can be stretched across the frame, giving you an opportunity to select a large motif or a mural-type fabric. Consider making a triptych, dividing one mural among the three panels of your room divider.
Simple Fabric Room Divider
Divide the width of your area by the number of panels to determine the width of each panel. Calculate the height needed to conceal any objects that will be behind the divider. Purchase 3/8-inch plywood sufficient to cut strips for your panel frames. The strips should be about an inch wide. If you're using decorative trim with a miter box, purchase trim for the fronts of your panels.
Purchase enough fabric to cover all of your panels, allowing at least four extra inches on all sides of each panel for stapling and adjusting. If you're using sheer or semi-sheer fabrics, double the width measurement to allow for gathering, then add the extra four inches on all sides.
Cut the plywood strips according to your height and width measurements. Make each panel frame by butting the strips together. Join them with wood glue and 5/8-inch finishing nails. After the glue dries, wrap the fabric around one lengthwise plywood strip and staple it to the back at the top. Wrap it around the opposite lengthwise strip and staple it to the back at the top. Make sure the fabric is straight before you continue stapling along the length of the strip. Then stretch the fabric to the back of the top widthwise strip and staple it. Repeat with the bottom widthwise strip.
If you're gathering your fabric, run a long basting stitch along the top and bottom edges of each piece, leaving a long thread tail at the beginning and end. Pull on the thread at one end to gather the fabric and adjust it to the width of the panel, leaving four inches ungathered on all sides for stapling. Stitch the gathers in place. Staple the fabric to the frame as above.
If you're adding decorative wooden trim, cut the trim to fit the panel frames and nail it to the front of each panel, over the fabric. If you're not using wooden trim, use the panels as is or glue decorative upholstery trim along each edge.
Connect the panels with hinges.
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