Brody’s Book Slings

As promised, here is the low-down on the book slings I made for Brody’s room. I got my sweet husband to begrudgingly happily hang these up last night, and I am so thrilled with the final product!

This is the tutorial that I used to make these book slings. It’s a pretty easy process- trust me, if I (who can barely sew a straight line) can do it, you can totally do it, too! I loved the idea of these for several reasons: 1) it helps the kids choose their own books because the covers are visible 2) they’re great for small spaces. I knew I needed some kind of wall-mounted book rack because Brody’s nursery is TINY and we had no space for even a book basket. However, every book rack I found online was so expensive!! I thought about using Ikea spice racks (like this), but we don’t have an Ikea, and they don’t sell them online. So, when I found this idea on Pinterest, I knew I had to try!

Materials/ Cost:

-Fabric (how much depends on the size you’re going for- mine was $17 because I took the easy way out)
-4 double rod brackets (bought mine from Lowe’s for $5 a piece)
-4 wooden dowels (5/8″ diameter… also from Lowe’s for $2.30/ each)
-Spray paint for the ends of the dowels (already owned, so free!)
Total cost for two book slings: $46.20 (or $23/each)

This would have been cheaper if I had just bought a yard of fabric, but I had a mildy brilliant idea of using a window valance as my sling fabric. This is so brilliant because a valance already has a rod pocket on one side, which meant I only had to sew ONE pocket. Oh yes, you can tell me how much you love me later. I didn’t take pictures during the process, so use the above tutorial if this is confusing. Basically, I cut my valance in half, hemmed up the raw edge, then folded the bottom edge over to make a new pocket. I did make the mistake the first time of sewing up the existing rod pocket when I hemmed my raw edge, but I realized this, cut the hem back open and fixed it. You kind of just have to tuck in the edge of the rod pocket instead of sewing that part of it up, if that makes sense.

Once you have your two rod pockets sewn, you just thread your dowels through to see how long they should be. The dowel just stick out just enough to be mounted into your brackets. Just cut them down to size with a saw. Then, you can leave the dowel as-is, or if you’re OCD like I am, you can sand the edge lightly and spray paint the ends to match your hardware.

Then, just install your brackets and hang up your slings!

This is what the hardware looks like, all installed. You can see why I chose to paint my dowels, because they are visible in the brackets. It also gives you a peek into the structure of the sling.

Lucky for us, ours screwed right into studs on either side, but if it doesn’t work out that way for you, just use the drywall anchors that come with your hardware before screwing it in. Since ours are anchored into studs, you could put a ton of books in these things without worrying about them falling off. I also chose to use a thicker dowel than the original tutorial suggested for that very reason.

We are so thrilled with the ways these turned out, and I am even more excited to get Brody’s nursery totally finished with every project that is completed!

P.S. I’m going to be on the radio Wednesday, January 4th at 12:40 p.m. (ET) with HGTV’s Frank Fontana on his “Down and Dirty” DIY Radio Show! They’re doing a segment on DIY Disasters, and they found my original blog post on Brody’s dresser and the staining nightmare that ensued. So, they’ll be interviewing me about the project, the problems I ran into, how I fixed it, and also plugging my blog. So cool!! It streams live online, here’s the address if you’d like to listen to me ramble live on the airwaves!

P.P.S. If you read my blog in a reader, hop over and check out the new header I made- I am loving Brody’s nursery color scheme so much, it migrated over here!

This work, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.