A Design Wall, It's a Good Thing

A lot of quilting sites always talk about a design wall. I never gave it much thought because I just don't have the room anywhere in my house. My sewing room is down in the basement because we have lots of animals, 5 cats, 2 dogs (itty bitty chihuahua's) so the basement is off limits to them so I will have a hairless room to sew in. I just couldn't see how the fabric could stay on the wall with just the flannel as a base, no pins, tape or anything else.

When I am arranging the quilt top on a table it's hard to get a good view of how it will look and then stretching to reach the middle of the quilt to make any changes. The ladies that have a design wall usually attach a length of flannel right on to a wall. I don't have that option so I was trying to think of another solution. Then I thought what if I made a temporary wall made from some cardboard. This worked okay for just a few small blocks but once the rows were sewn together the cardboard was to flimsy to stay upright. Then I had a great idea. What about foam board. It is light weight but still very sturdy and comes in all different sizes at our local staples stores. So I tried it and voila, a very good solution. Here are a few pictures of what I came up with. Pictures are above lol, don't know how they got there but at least I was able to get them up. I'm still getting used to using my camera and using all the blogging tools.

Another good incentive for the board is, if you leave it up when you are still working on it, it will be a reminder that you really should finish it before starting a new project. If you put it into a not finished pile, it might not come out for a very long time. If it's staring you in the face its hard to ignore lol.

I really love my make do design wall. Its light weight so easy to handle and when I don't need it I can move it anywhere with ease. If you don't have one of your own, you should really try it. Looking at the block arrangement  over a few days can help you decide what is the best arrangement of the blocks.