Upcycled Fabric Backgammon Board

Backgammon is a perfect game for Sunday afternoons. It is played lots in Greece, and when I went to Crete we sat for hours playing by the sea supping on sweet cafe freddos. When I found out a friend of mine loved backgammon, and travels a lot, and it was his birthday I thought making a travel fold-out board out of fabric would make a lovely gift.

In January I found myself away from my studio (and sewing machine) so all the making I've been doing these past few months has been by hand. I also had the added challenge of all the fabric shops and haberdasheries being closed, and not really having a good online alternative. So the design of the backgammon board had a few challenges baked into it - to make a hand-stitched travel backgammon set using only the stuff I could find around the house or that I had in my small maker kit.

I teamed up with my friend Kara, and we made a fabric board and made clay pieces that neatly fit into a little pouch.

Fabric for the main board (I used upcycled skirts)

Fabric for the pouch and backing (in complementary colour to the board)

Zip for the pouch

Needles

Pins

Threads in similar colour to the fabrics

Fabric for applique triangular points

Thread for stitched triangular points

Air-drying clay for the checkers (or filmo or other sculpting materials would work)

Acrylic paint for checkers

2 x Dice to play with

Iron and board

Measuring tools

Fabric scissors

Pencil / paper / paper scissors

The skirt I used was from a thrift store and it cost €3 as it was in pretty bad shape, but the actual fabric was perfect. It was a vibrant colour, and also pretty thick, so would be sturdy as a board. I also use a similar green skirt which also cost €3 from a thrift store, but I forgot to take a picture!

I started the making process by carefully unpicking the skirt at the seems so that I had maximum amount of fabric to play with.

This was by far the most tricky part of the process. I wanted the board to look good, and the skirt pattern did not have any parts big enough for a board (unless I used ridiculously small pieces, but that is no fun!).

Firstly I decided on a good size for the checkers (name for the pieces) - I tried out euro coins for size and settled with a 5 cent euro coin. I then made 24 paper "points" templates (points is the name for the triangles on a backgammon board). I laid these out in a number of different arrangements until I found something that worked.

In the end I used a chunky strip in the middle (which is called the "bar" and where your checkers lurk when you have been thrown off the board. And I used two larger pieces of the skirt either side. I used a ladder stitch (an invisible hand stitch) to sew the bar to both sides of the board, pinning first, and ironing flat after. The photos shows what this looks like when finished - the bar fabric is in the opposite direction to the two parts it is stitched to.

Backgammon board is made up of 24 triangles, called points. Players race around the board on the points, to get home, then eventually take their checkers off the board to win the game. The points usually alternate between two contrasting colours. I chose to applique on darker fabric, and then use small lighter stitches. I really liked how this added textures to the board, but you could also only applique or only stitch.

For the dark gray points I cut out 12 triangles using the paper templates I made in the last step. The fabric for these was also up-cycled (from an old pair of leggings!).

I then put the triangles aside so that I could layout the board.

A key part to making the board was keeping everything as straight as possible. It was of course going to be pretty wonky, but by being really careful this was only a subtle wonk! I pinned the 24 paper triangles so that I am ready for the next couple of steps to assemble the "points" for the backgammon play. It was quite handy to pin these to the board just to check that I had measured it all ok, and I used a quilting ruler to help with this.

I pinned the grey fabric triangles in place (replacing the paper template placeholders) an sewed them on with a similar colour thread. To help me keep everything as straight as possible I only removed the paper placeholders as I needed to. I kept the other paper templates as place holders, which helped me to make sure the spacing would work for the white stitching in the next step.

I used a very simple running stitch. You could be way more fancy by using a more advanced applique technique, but I didn't have time as wanted to gift the board to a friend for their birthday!

After stitching all the grey points I got started on the lighter colour points. To do this I loosely sewed a red thread around the paper triangle template (that I had left in place after the last step). The red thread acts as a guide line, so can be really big stitches, and doesn't need to be knotted or tied off. It should be in a contrasting colour to the board and the light stitches. I sewed all the 12 guidelines for the light coloured points and removed the paper templates.

I then took on the epic task of sewing many many tiny stitches to fill in the triangles. Once complete I removed the red thread and the tiny white stitches make a very neat triangular shape. This was quite labour intensive so if you want to save time I would recommend just using applique. Although it does look beautiful with all the little stitches!

To finish off, add strength, and hide the messy back I used some green fabric - also up-cycled from a skirt. I cut the green fabric larger than the board, and folded it under and pinned. I gave it an iron so that it was nice and neat (my kind of neat) and stitched all the way round with a blue thread. You can't see the stitches and it looks really lovely. This was a very satisfying moment of the process!

The pouch holds the board, dice, and the pieces. It means that the board is really handy to take on trips, and we made it out of a similar fabric to tie everything together.

We got dimensions for the pouch by folding the board up, and measuring (allowing some wiggle room). Kara then used the zip from the skirt, and more of the green skirt fabric to sew a simple square pocket and added a zip. There are loads of good instructables here to help sewing zips or pouches. One suggestion a friend made after was to make straps like a bum bag (fanny pack) which is a great idea and I'd love to see that if someone tries it! You could have a whole series of board games in bum bags!

The pieces are made from air-drying clay and painted with acrylic. When designing the board we used coins as a rough guide to the overall size (it would need to fit at least 5 checkers on a point). We used the 5 cent euro coin as our guide. Kara then shaped the pieces roughly the size of the 5 cent euro coin, and found a candle holder to make the lovely relief print pattern. When dry Kara painted them contrasting colours that compliment the board design.

And there you have it. Here's the board in action.

I can't wait to go round my friends garden and play (need a bit more sun here for that!)

The hardest thing to remember when playing backgammon is the board set-up. I always forget! Once you've googled how to set the pieces up make sure you have a refreshing drink at hand and prepare to play endless games all afternoon in the sunshine. Handy thing about this set is very portable, and you can throw it in your bag and play on the beach too!