apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

I once participated in setting up a coop art gallery. We wanted a gallery look on a budget so we covered some pegboard panels with burlap and painted them white with latex paint, giving us a wonderful texture that we thought we could push hooks through for hanging art. Well, everything worked great except for the fact that the latex paint solidified the burlap so we needed to use nails anyhow -- plain masonite or plywood panels would have worked better and more cheaply.

Still, I recommend it for the coarsly woven texture, if you like such things. (Might be useful to disguise cracked plaster or something.) It would be a nightmare to remove if glued onto the wall, though, hence the panels which can be nailed in place.

(Plain burlap has an odor I don't like -- sniff before buying!)

Personally the burlap textured walls make me think of my old cubicle from work, not a pleasant thing to be reminded of.

So where are the pillows from? They're cute.

Just how comfy would it be to snuggle into burlap? It doesn't look very soft.

I remember my mother who grew up very poor in the South saying they used flour saks and burlap for pillow coverings.

Scratchy and itchy.

Not my thing... I think it looks like someone just dropped off 2 big bags of oats on my outdoor furniture.

Here in Toronto, Horsefeathers is selling similar pillows printed with graphic South Asian advertising graphics: http://stylenorth.ca/blog/2009/05/iconic-graphics-make-great-accents/

You can put burlap or any other fabric directly on a wall, just prime the wall first with wallpaper primer and use wallpaper paste as the adhesive. It'll peel right off when you're done with that look.

Burlap comes in a lot of different colors. I personally don't like the smell of it (think jute rope). Also the weave is often way off square if that bothers you--it looks cheap to me. Sometimes you can straighten a weave by tugging it in the other direction.

I think it's way too scratchy for pillows.

i have used old coffee bean sacs (from our roaster)for bench seat upholstery, the burlap gets softer over time

fantasticmrfaux, I spotted these pillows at a street fair and there was no tag so, unfortunately, no source. An online search brings up a few ideas so that may be a good direction to go if you are looking.

gecko, great idea to recover your bench seat with old coffee sacks and good to know about the texture getting a softer during use.

Which street fair and which vendor?