Does anybody know why it is called a french memo board?  I’m still trying to figure it out.  Also known as fabric covered memo board, ribbon memo board, photo board, bulletin board, pin board, inspiration board and the list goes on.  Yeah, just google any of those terms and you’ll see tutorials galore on how to make one of these.

These are not hard to put together.  I used a cheapie stretched artist canvas as my board, lay the wadding (or batting) over it and finally, a piece of Amy Butler Nigella (woodfern – nickel) to cover it up.  Then get acquainted with your staple gun and staple away (the fabric to the board).  The next step, which I found to be the most challenging of this project was to decide how many criss-crosses I wanted on the board and to space them out evenly.  Once all that is decided, staple away again to hold the ribbons in place.  And that’s it really, unless…

you want to add buttons to the criss-crosses to give it the quilted look.  I had to sew 24 buttons on without a thimble and my poor finger was a bit sore afterward.  I’m thinking of using brads/split pins might just be easier and if using a cork board instead, I could use thumb tacks (or push pins) to hold everything in place.

Here,  you can see the memo board in all its glory – the spacing is a bit wonky and uneven, but if we cover up with lots of notes and photos, it might not be noticeable.  Yeah, maybe the recipient won’t notice it at all.