Half canopy tutorial

When I planned my daughter’s room, I kept coming across images of rooms, with partial canopies over the bed. I’m still unsure of the name. Some sites call it a half canopy, some call it a bed crown. For the sake of clarity, I’m going with half canopy, because it makes sense to me. I couldn’t find good instructions for how to make one, so I made it up along the way and took pictures.

 

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Make the base of the half-canopy

Start by making the wooden valance for the half-canopy. I used a 1 x 12. The long part is 40″ and the sides are about 7″. The short sides are screwed into the ends of the long piece. It’s not going to be holding that much weight, so 2 screws on each end were plenty.

Sizing:

I wanted the canopy to be slightly wider than a twin bed. I’ve also seen them made smaller than the bed.

Make the curtain rod support

I had to redo this part, but I’m posting it to tell how to do it better. Use a 1″ paddle bit to make a hole in the middle of a piece of scrap wood. Then cut it in half. (I used too small of a paddle bit and had to redo it.)

Another good way would have been to make holes farther into the wood and then use a jigsaw to cut straight lines to the holes, making a U shape.

Attach the curtain rod support to the base of the half canopy

Use a nail gun to attach a piece to each short end on the inside of the valance. They should have the holes facing up in the same direction. I attached my pieces about an inch from the top, to give plenty of room to maneuver the curtain rod once it is hung against the ceiling.

Hide the wooden edge with extra fabric

I used about 5″ of fabric  and wrapped the bottom edge of the half canopy valance, so that wood is not visible when lying in bed.

Attach the half canopy valance fabric

On the top edge, I stapled the valance fabric from the inside edge. This is the part that will look pretty and cover the wood. I used navy fabric that I hemmed along the edge and added ribbon for a pretty detail. I pleated it as I worked, at each corner, and in the middle.

(You can see the curtain rod support here pretty well. It’s placed higher up so that the fabric would be hung higher.)

Attach L brackets for hanging

I screwed in L-brackets into each side, so that it would be easy to hang of the wall. (In retrospect, I should have attached it to the wall first. It was hard to get the screwdriver into the space to attach it.)

Here is what it looked like, ready to be hung. You can see the pleat in the center.

Hang the half canopy

I held the canopy in place, so that my husband could mark the holes for the anchor. We used these  because they are so easy to use. You just screw them in, no pre-drilling.

As I mentioned before, he had a hard time screwing the screws in. He improvised, using a ratchet and screwdriver bit.

 

Here you can see how the rod is hung. I used an IKEA curtain rod that I had bought on accident. A dowel would work as well.

 

Hang the curtain panels

Here it is hung with the curtain panels I used this navy fabric from Warehouse Fabrics and this Premier Prints striped fabric in Baby Pink from Fabric.com. For the navy portion, I bought 3 yards. I cut it into 2 90″ lengths and hemmed it on all sides. The remainder was used for the valance portion. The striped fabric was cut into 2 portions and sewed together to create a wider piece. I hemmed all of the edges. I used curtain rings to hang everything. The navy part wraps around the side and a little behind the pink part. It’s done using creative use of curtain rings and tacks. I could have stapled it in, but I want it to be removable for cleaning. It still needs to be tweaked a bit.

My one complaint is that the pink fabric is too thick. I took a chance on it and while it’s fine, it doesn’t drape well. Err on the side of lighter weight fabric. I’m going to add drapery weights and see if that helps.

I hope this helps someone else looking to make a similar project.