A giant DIY wall hanging is easy to make for home decor with this step by step tutorial. Looking for large wall art on a budget? This DIY wall flag tutorial is for you!
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I’ve made a few of these giant DIY wall hangings for home decor and each time I’ve shared those room makeovers, I’ve promised to write up a tutorial… so today is the day, it’s finally time! Today I’m sharing how to create your own giant DIY wall hanging on a budget. These large wall flags or wall tapestries are easy to make with scrap fabric, drop cloths, curtain cut offs, or even flour sack tea towels.
I love these DIY wall hangings for a few reasons. First of all, they’re large. They make a big impact in any space and filling space without filling our budget? That’s a win.
Secondly, they’re so full of texture and interest. I love to balance the wall decor types in a room with variety. So if I have framed photos, I also like to have something textured. Like these DIY wall flags.
Third? They’re incredibly versatile. If you like hand lettered decor, these are perfect for you. Black and white, monochromatic style? Yep! More of an abstract art lover? You betcha! You can add anything to your DIY wall hanging!
In this tutorial, I’m going to give a few examples, sharing how I make a hand lettered DIY wall hanging with Cricut AND how I made an abstract painted wall hanging. If you don’t have a Cricut and want to add hand lettering to your DIY wall flag- check out this post here all about lettering on fabric! You can still make the wall hanging with grommets like in this tutorial.
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What fabric is best for a DIY Wall Hanging?
The first thing you’ll need for your DIY wall hanging is some fabric. There’s so many different options here and honestly, none of them are bad. I’ve used several different types of fabric and want to highlight my favourite few.
You can go and buy yourself fabric from a fabric store- I’d suggest a canvas or an upholstery fabric to get the thickness you need for paint, but really anything will work.
Other than that though? We can get creative and save some money! I love to use a drop cloth for a natural color fabric DIY wall hanging. You can see I’ve used that for this hand lettered one on a dowel. See that tutorial here. These are affordable for a big piece of fabric, just make sure you get the unwaxed kind.
I also love to use curtain panels or the ends of curtain panels. When I’m purchasing curtains for my home, I generally buy the longest ones and hem them myself. I find the cost difference is minimal from IKEA and since I like to hang my curtains high and wide, this gives me enough fabric to play with. In my bay windows– this means I have pretty large pieces of fabric cut off of the ends. This is perfect for these DIY wall hangings!
You can see I used that for both the playroom hand lettered wall hanging and then I sewed two panels together for an even larger one in my son’s lego bedroom. These particular panels are the IKEA RITVA curtains, I love the woven texture on these.
Lastly, if you’re not going for a giant DIY wall flag, you can use a flour sack tea towel like I did for this nursery wall hanging. I ordered these off of Amazon and they’re the perfect size for a DIY wall hanging in a bedroom- bonus, you don’t need to hem the edges, it’s already done! The downside to these is that they are on the thinner side so I’d stick to iron on vinyl instead of paint.
Like a small DIY wall hanging, you can choose to leave your edges raw or hem them. If you choose to hem them which I prefer, you can do it by sewing or by iron on hemming tape. This is a really easy way to speed through a hemming project. You can see how I do that for a no sew wall hanging here.
How to Hang a DIY Wall Flag for Decor
There are a few ways to hang a DIY wall flag I’ve tried and one I prefer over the rest! You can use a long dowel to wrap the top of your DIY wall hanging over to create a giant pennant. I show how to do that in this handlettered wall hanging tutorial.
You can also just stretch it and use nails to affix it to the wall.
But my personal favorite way to hang a DIY wall flag is with grommets. I like to add grommets to the corners of my DIY wall hangings to make them easier to hang and to add a little extra interest. I think this makes them look more professional as well.
To add a grommet, you need to buy large grommets and a grommet setting tool. You can get both in this set here. You just line up your grommets on the tool and layer your fabric in between the pieces, setting them in with a hammer. It’s like magic, really. My 9 year old son helped me set them in his lego man wall flag, I promise- it’s pretty simple :)
How to add hand lettering to a DIY Wall Hanging
A quote makes for great room decor for kids, playrooms and nurseries. I love adding inspiring messages to my kids room decor. There’s a couple ways you can add quotes to your fabric wall hangings. You can paint it on to the fabric by hand- this is a great video that shows the different ways to letter on fabric. This can look totally amazing is affordable to get the supplies for.
Since I’ve already written tutorials for wall hangings with painted hand lettering, today I want to focus on using a Cricut or cut out hand lettering for a DIY wall hanging. I love how bold and clean this hand lettering on fabric looks. It’s easy to get a professional look to your DIY wall hanging thanks to iron on vinyl and hand lettering cut with Cricut. Let’s talk about how to do that!
You can either hand letter your design digitally or letter it on paper and digitize it. I prefer to letter digitally to save time and effort. I use my iPad Pro with an Apple Pencil with the Procreate app. I export the design as a PNG after turning the background layer off. This gives me a clean cuttable file without any additional steps.
Alternately, you can hand letter on paper using a brush marker and digitize your lettering. I have a tutorial on how to digitize your hand lettering for cut with Cricut right here. Essentially, you scan in or take a photo of your lettering, then take it into photoshop to clean it up and remove the background. You can get a free trial for 7 days.
Once you have your file ready to cut, upload it to Cricut Design Space (or whatever cutting machine software you’ll be using for your project) and insert it onto your canvas. If you are new to uploading your own files to Cricut Design Space, I have a full blog post and video detailing not only how to upload your own image to Cricut but also what different file types you can use and tips for each.
If you’re cutting a design that’s under 12×24″ great! If you want to cut it bigger like I did, there’s a few extra steps to take. You can either export each word from your iPad individually or export the whole quote and take care of it in Cricut Design Space (see above for both options).
How to cut a large design on Cricut
To cut a design larger than the mat using Cricut, you need to break your design up. You’ll be given a warning saying the design is too large for the cut area and that it must be reduced. Instead, let’s break it up. You can do this in Cricut design space.
I like to duplicate my design, then use the ‘contour’ button to remove the pieces that won’t fit on one mat.
I do this as many times as I need to until I have all the pieces of my file on separate mats. This is why I like to use a casual script when I’m hand lettering as there’s more breaks making it easier to separate. You can cut it out with tighter spacing than if you leave the whole file together (less vinyl waste) and piece it back together on your project once it’s been weeded.
Make sure to mirror the design if you’re using iron on vinyl.
Then you just need to iron it on! I like to use my Cricut Easy Press for this, but you could also use a standard iron.
How to Paint a Wall Hanging (Modern DIY Art)
The other giant DIY wall hanging I’ve shared recently is this abstract lego man wall flag my son and I made for his tween bedroom makeover. After making the wall flag, we used craft paint that I had in my stash to create an abstract design on the flag.
We used acrylic craft paint and my son had fun squirting it onto the canvas, splattering it and scraping it around (we used a Cricut scraper but a spatula or old gift card card would also work well. I would have loved to keep this a bit more neutral, but it’s his room and he wanted blues and yellows in there as well – he gets to choose since it’s his space!
It’s important to let this dry completely before moving to the next step.
After that was totally dry, we went in and illustrated a line art lego man. We did this free hand and used oil pastels from our kids art kit. I love how easily the oil pastels drew on fabric and we were able to make it darker or lighter just with pressure. Any line art design would look beautiful on top of an abstract painting like this. I’m imagining a line art silhouette or florals over some blush and tan abstract painting- wouldn’t that be lovely?
If you’re going to DIY modern art like this, I definitely recommend signing it. My son added his signature to the bottom and added some numbers to the top like you would find on a lego kit.
I hope this post has been informative to you and you’re feeling ready to tackle your own giant DIY wall hanging for home decor! I’m such a fan of this project, I know I’ll be using this tutorial myself again in the future. If you do make yourself a DIY wall hanging, you know I would love to see! Tag me on social @colleenpastoor or shoot me an email colleen(at)lemonthistle.com.
You can see the full room reveal posts featured in this tutorial right here:
More DIY Wall Decor Tutorials
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I would love to know the best way to hang up the tapestry with the grommets? This will be a gift for a nursery so I want to make sure it is secure.
I just use nails! you could try cup hooks for more security :)