Isn’t It the Right Time for an Official IKEA Blanket Fort?

If you’ve ever made a blanket fort at home, you probably didn’t have an instruction manual. Forts are usually created ad hoc, with whatever you happen to have on hand. But designers like to get in on the blanket fort tradition, and none other than IKEA itself released patterns for blanket forts, made in the style of its furniture assembly pamphlets, and they look like they’d be fun to try. With the weather dreary and home needing to be the end-all-be-all for us and our kids, isn’t it the right for a little step-by-step building?

The instructions for the six different fort models were created by IKEA Russia with the help of creative agency Instinct.

Like regular IKEA instructions, they show a line drawing of the finished piece, along with names, illustrations, and quantities of each of the parts you need to create them.

All the individual parts are IKEA products, but you probably already have many of them, or objects you could substitute in their place.

They include the classic fort-making materials — blankets, pillows, books, couch cushions, chairs, and clothespins — along with inspired touches like an octopus-shaped drying rack (used to hold up string lights) and a coat rack and valet (both used as tent frames).

If you don’t have exactly the materials listed and need to improvise, that seems like a perfect invitation to try drawing plans for your own fort. What IKEA-like name would you give it?

And there’s more for the interior design-entranced child (and, ahem, their grown-ups): in another effort to keep customers entertained at home, IKEA Israel released printable coloring pages featuring an IKEA living room scene, a tic-tac toe game with a KALLAX cube shelf as the board, and more. You can find those here.