Just don’t even try to out-nerd my childhood, guys. I’ll win the nerdiest-childhood-competition every time. I’m sorry, it’s just not even a fair fight.

I wore headgear to school. That junk builds character, y’all.

I read Reader’s Digest in elementary school, and I wore mismatched socks on purpose. (It’s a little fuzzy to me whether the mismatched socks was “a thing” at that time, or just me being super weird.) I wore berets — you know, the french painter hats? — on a regular basis. That was definitely NOT a thing that anyone else did.

And I wore headgear to school.

That probably explains a lot, if you’ve been reading here a while.

Anyway, since I was the teacher’s-pet-nerd-type who devoured large condensed books from my bedroom while the other kids learned how to not be afraid to play kickball, I love projects that encourage kids to read…

which brings me to Anselm’s reading nook. Look how cute it turned out!

You might remember from this post that my friend Erin is doing a nursery for her new baby boy Anselm. She created this little reading nook for her two older boys to chillax with a good read while mom nurses the baby.

Just sayin: if I’d had a little spot like that to curl up and read as a kid, I would never have left, except to eat, or try to start a Babysitters Club or something.

Here’s a rough idea of how to make your own.

Materials you’ll need:

• Two Ikea Vivan panels (or white fabric)
• Six yards of patterned fabric for inside the nook. This is the gray ikat fabric Erin used. *Affiliate link
• Stitch witchery (or a sewing machine, if you’re trying to be an overachiever about this)
• Two large hooks (from the hardware store)

Step 1: Prep the fabrics

Lay your two curtain panels on top of each other, right sides together, and use stitch witchery to hem one of the long sides. (This will be the back of the nook.) Cut two pieces of your patterned fabric to the same length as the curtains, lay them on the floor with the right sides together, and use stitch witchery to hem one of the long sides. Then fit the patterned fabric inside the curtain panels so the two fused hems are side by side. (Sorry no pics of this step! Hope this makes sense!)

Step 2: Hang the hooks on the wall

The nook is connected to the wall and the ceiling via hooks:

The hooks are just screwed in wherever they could find a stud – which is important because you don’t want the kiddos to be able to pull this out from the wall or ceiling. You can kinda just eyeball about how far out onto the ceiling one of the hooks should go, and how far down the wall the other one should go. Erin’s is about 21 inches down from the ceiling on the wall, and about 40 inches out from the corner on the ceiling.

Step 3: Cut your fabric pieces

Erin used safety pins to temporarily hang the curtains on the hooks so she could see what angle to cut the top of the panels so the fabric would hang evenly to the floor. She marked it with pins and cut the top at that angle:

Then she roughly hemmed that top seam with stitch witchery.

At this point you basically have a giant pillowcase that’s only sewn shut on two of the sides. On the long side that’s not sewn shut, wrap the patterned fabric around the front of the curtain fabric and use the stitch witchery to create a little double hem. It’s just prettier this way.


Step 4: Add finishing touches

Use a little extra fabric to hand-sew tiny loops on the back of the curtains which will hang on the hooks.

Now if you hang it up on those hooks, it’ll look something like this:

Now you just hook the sides onto the wall. Erin hand-sewed hooks which she hooked onto finishing nails on the wall, but you could use thumbtacks or whatever.

Then Erin hemmed the bottom so it was all even and a few inches off the floor (to prevent the kiddos from stepping or sitting on excess fabric and yanking the whole thing down).

She used an old rug and comforter to make a cushy little floor for the big brothers to hang out on. So far I think they’re diggin’ it.

Lots of good readin’ happening in that little corner. Which is good for their character, yet so much less painful than the headgear situation.




Raise your hand if you were a nerd as a kid. Or if you still are. But it’s not a competition about who was nerdiest, guys. I already won that.