I do think we are all artists and the medium we use is fabric. As I read somewhere on this board, we have the need to create and would use whatever we have at hand. Everyone wants to be appreciated and acknowledged for what they do. If not, there wouldn't be art galleries and quilt shows. It is human.
My daughters are good people too but as non-sewers they don't know what all goes into it either. I know they will like what I give them, whatever it is.
The padded board is a quilter's squaring and blocking board. I looked at Joann's and it says it is out of stock but I'm sure other places have it. It's hard padded with grid lines though I wouldn't use those grid lines because they aren't true. When I have a block that is too big, or too small, I pin it to the board in the size that it SHOULD be, spray it with starch, and either stretch it out or shrink it. It does work wonders and the little stars would be a whole lot worse if I hadn't done that to make them true.
Link to the board
http://www.joann.com/joann/catalog.j...ODID=xprd74140
A video on shrinking and there are others from her about stretching.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6apl...eature=related