How to make a table top canopy

I’m finally getting around to the tutorial on how I made the striped table top canopy, better late than never right? You can see how to make the table top canopy frame here

Now you don’t have to do blue stripes, or stripes at all, it all depends on the look you want.  You can buy striped canvas fabric, but I chose to paint mine because I wanted wider stripes. The canopy fabric needs to be 54″ wide canvas fabric and you’ll need to 2 1/2 yards.  If you don’t want to paint stripes, you can skip these painting steps, and go straight to cutting the scallops.

Lay out the whole 2 1/2 yards of fabric on a flat surface.   Take your measuring tape and a pencil and mark spacings of 5″ going down the width of the fabric.

Lay a drop cloth under your fabric before you start painting because the paint bleeds through the fabric.  Start with 3 bottles of acrylic paint mixed with the Fabric Medium, using the ratio they provided on the bottle.  You will need to do this twice during painting, it takes about 6 bottles of paint to do the whole thing.  This Martha Steward tray and roller from Michaels, works really well for this project.

Notice that the blue tape is on the outside edge of the areas where I am painting the blue.  That’s because the tape is about an inch wide, and if I put it inside the blue line it will shrink my stripe to 3″ due to the width of the tape.  {I put a scrap piece of blue tape on the parts that are to be kept white} Double check your tape to make sure it is secure to the fabric and then start your painting.  Overlap the paint on to the tape about a 1/4″.

Once your paint is dry to the touch, peal off all the tape and lay flat to dry.  After the paint is dry, use this template to trace and cut a half circle at the edge of all your stripes. You are making your scallops across the length of the fabric. I made this template especially for this post, but when I was making my canopy top, I actually just used an oval bowl as my template.

Now you are ready to attach the table top canopy to the frame. I have included a lot of pictures that will hopefully give you a good visual in case my instructions aren’t clear.

Find the center of the fabric and drape the fabric across the front and back cross bars, centering the scallops on the front cross bar of the frame. The scalloped side should hang 7″ off the front of the canopy frame. At this point you will have about 10-15″ extra fabric on the backside.  I trimmed this down with an exacto knife after I stapled it to the backside of the frame.

The best way to make sure your fabric is taut on the frame, is to put a staple on the front top cross bar in the middle, then go to the back and pull the fabric taut and put another staple on the back top crossbar.  Then do the same steps for the remaining two sides.  Once you have all four sides taut with a staple, now go back and continue to staple the rest of the fabric down pulling the fabric taut as you go. These staples won’t show since the table top canopy is so high once it is on the actual table.

For the back corners, you will need to make a slit in the fabric to fit around where the two pieces of the frame meet.  Wrap the fabric up inside the cross bar and staple away.  Trim away excess fabric with an exacto knife.

This is how the inside back cross bar and side panel should look once they are stapled to the frame

and then the backside of the cross bar

Trim the length of the two sides of the canopy fabric to your liking.  I trimmed my fabric along the blue line of the scalloped which gave me about 3″ overhang.  I just folded the scallops back to the side bar and stapled it down.

Here is how it should look from the front side

And here is the backside

If you have any questions, please feel free to email me.  I would LOVE to see pictures if anyone makes a table top canopy!