Your husband is pretty smart. At the last quilt show there was a company selling design walls and that's exactly what they looked like. Mine is just the (cottage cheese) cieling tiles mounted on the wall. They work great; cheap and if you want to steam your fabric they are heat retardent.

For my design wall, I purchased an artist's canvas from JoAnn -it has a lightweight wood frame in the back which made it easy to put picture type hangers on. I , well actually,my DH covered it with fleece,which is stapled to the back. Very neat and lightweight. I don't make large bed size quilts though, so this wouldn't be big enough for that.

Make it as big as you can to fit it in your space. Big is always better. Use flannel or felt if possible so you fabric pieces will stick to the board. Also use the search function on this board to look at the many design wall ideas others have posted.

My first design wall was a vinyl tablecloth with that fuzzy backing. It was too small. My second wall was a flannel king size sheet tacked up in the hallway. I use my hallway because it's very wide, and because there's no other uninterrupted wall in my house large enough. The flannel worked okay, but every time someone walked down the hallway the blocks would fall off. Now I'm using batting yardage, and it works GREAT! The batting is very "sticky", the blocks don't get knocked off, and it's large enough for multiple quilts in progress.

I went to Joann's and bought a 6'x6' piece of black/navy felt. The edges are turned down over a piece of wood which is screwed to the wall. It's wonderful!!

HTH,
Marcia

I bought mine from Fons & Porter when it was on sale for around $20. It replaced a piece of flannel tacked to the wall. It has gromments in the top for hanging. I'm very pleased with it's large size.

I have an attic sewing room, connected to the guest bedroom by a 3'hallway. On one side is the pony (1/2) wall divider for the stairway and the other side is a blank sheetrocked wall about 6' tall. I just tacked up flannel cloth for my design wall and pieces do stick to it. But I have a window in my sewing room which, when open, will blow the pieces off. So I usually use pins. I've been doing scrappy strip foundation pieces, so I pin up my strips to see which strips look best next to each other. I haven't been able to get back to it for a couple months now..(Sigh!)

I like your idea of a curtain rod. How wide are the bi-fold doors? Is there room on either side of the doors to push the fabric out of the way of the doors? I would use the cheap batting from WalMart or fleece. Then use the sliding rings (with clips) also from WalMart to attach the batting to the curtain rod. Then a large package of pins to pin individual blocks. The only problem I see is if the curtain rod needs a center support it may be hard to pull the batting back and forth. Some quilts tops get rather heavy.

I have closet type cabinets with 3 wide and tall doors. I bought flannel backed vinyl at Joanns with a coupon. I cut them to the length of the doors, put little vertical slits on each side of the tops and attached some Command hook to the doors. Then slipped the slits onto the hooks. No damage to anything, no holes in the walls and I can take them down if I want.

Yes, this topic has been discussed several times with some GREAT ideas given.

Go to SEARCH above, and type in Design Wall. You will find several discussions.

Good luck! There's lots of options.