I am looking to add a design wall to my craft room and have no idea what to do. How big should it be? What should it be made of? I am thinking a curtain rod with a king size white sheet. My husband is thinking a window shade that can be rolled up and down as needed. This wall will be over the byfold closet doors. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

The bigger the better IMHO!!!!!!

You can even cover your bifold doors with fabric for a design wall.

Several people have said they use flannel like the back of a picnic table cloth. Do a search on here, you will find many ideas.

I made a design wall from one of those cardboard cutting mats that you find at Joann's or Hancocks. I bought some flannel (on sale of course) in a solid color and covered the inside of the mat and stapled it around the edges to the backside. I like it because it is rigid and because I can fold it and put it behind a cabinet. If I need to take a WIP to class, I don't even take my quilt blocks or pieces off the design wall. I just fold the mat with the pieces on the inside and throw it in the car. The whole thing cost about eight bucks total to make.

Fleece works great too. I've put up fully assembled quilts on it and it sticks without pins. A bonus of the fleece is the width. I used black.

There's also a flannelette product that has grid markings on white that is great for placement and keeping all straight.

I love my design wall. Never had one until about 6 months ago. Don't know what I did before. The shade idea is good, but what will make the pieces stick? Can you put fleece on it and still roll it up? Getting it up out of the way is a good idea since it will hang over doors. Without the fleece the quilt pieces won't stick. There are different ideas posted here, try the search function. Good luck.
Sue

Wow, while I was typing my reply, so was everyone else. Great minds think alike. LOL
Sue

I suggest you make it at least as large as any quilt you "think" you may make. Mine is 7 1/2' x 6' wide. Right now I am working on a quilt that is about about 6" wider and longer than that. It makes it a lot harder to work on. I just used two sheets of the rigid foam insulation from Home Depot. Cut one in half and added it to the side of one of the panels. I don't have a cover on mine because I use spray baste and do it it all on my design wall.

That's what I did. I cut a vinyl table cloth to the size of the bifolds and hot glued them to the doors - so the doors are still functional. I would like it to be bigger, but at least I have something. :-)
You could also just hang said tablecloth above the doors and if you needed to, you could remove the whole thing, pieces and all, roll it up and take it with you to a class or workshop.

I love my Block Butler.

http://www.blockbutler.com/cart/

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.

I bought two yards of white felt. I turned the top over 1 inch & stitched it to form a casing. I bought a curtain rod & hung it up on my wall. When not in use, the design stays rolled up & out of the way. The wall was orginally 70" wide. I have a sewing room now. I have hung it over my window. I cut 10" off so it would fit my window. Good Luck with it.

debra

I covered cardboard with extra warm and natural batting. Pieces stick great

I bought foam core board at a craft store, taped them together with duct tape and then covered the whole thing with flannel.

My design wall is a very large, very wide piece of extra thick cream colored polar fleece, double layered and pinned to the wall along the top. I roll it up to the ceiling and secure it with ribbons when not in use.
Using the extra cushy surface works really well. It even holds up whole quilts with its cling and no pins.

I purchased a new queensize flannel sheet for $2.50 at Goodwill. I plan to add several grommetts to one edge, probably the top, then I will add inconspicuous hooks (probably those you can easily remove) to one wall close to the ceiling to hang the sheet. This will allow me to fold it and put it away when not in use.

Our Extension Office has two 2" thick 7' x 3" pieces styrofoam covered with fabric but they have a huge storage room

Another way which I did is to use wood towel hangers that you can get at Home Depot - mount the ends to the ceiling and use a long dowel instead of the towel rod. Hang it above your bi fold doors. Hang a piece of batting as wide and as long as you need it, using curtain hooks. This way if you need to get it out of the way, you can push it to one side or the other.

I find that batting works better than flannel.

My sewing room is also my bedroom...in the attic...with the walls currently being insulation. So I can't even tack a piece of felt to the wall. My design wall is a piece of 36 by 36 inch felt with 2 skirt hangers over my wardrobe. I have another piece of felt I sometimes safety pin to it to make it longer or wider, but it works for me and is much better than nothing at all! I like the idea of putting flannel or felt on the doors so it will fold out of the way if needed

Yes, make it as big as possible. The one I use is too small for lap quilts. It's a trifold display board with a plastic tablecloth over it, fuzzy side up. It works great but I would love to have something bigger. The plus side is that I can fold it up and put it aside when not in use.

I agree with your husband. I'm going to buy a window shade, glue flannel to it and then I can roll it up when I'm not using it.

I did this as well but covered mine with some grey flannel that I had. To hang it on the wall I put some 3-M hooks on the wall and clipped binder clips to the board. For a larger quilt you could put two of these side by side.

I used a fold up cardboard cutting board as well. (It was one that I had from when I started sewing back in the 70's!) I covered mine with some grey flannel that I had. To hang it on the wall I put some 3-M hooks on the wall and clipped binder clips to the board. For a larger quilt you could put two of these side by side.

I did this and it works great... found the largest tablecloth and put it up... I have an unfinished wall so was able to staple it ...

I purchased a ready-made design wall from a quilt shop (Grubers in St. Cloud, MN). It has several grommets at the top. I just put up little hooks, hung it up and went to work using it. I can take it down if I need the wall for something else.

I love my design wall and it takes up no space at all.
I went to Joanns and bought flannel backed tablecloth fabric. Went to the hardware store and bought firring strips (long strip of wood 2 inches wide which I painted with some spray faux stone paint i had leftover. DH screwd the wood into the wall, the tablecloth fuzzy side out was behind the wood strip. Into the strip he then nailed some long nails that sticck out. This is where I keep my rulers and scissors, rotary cutters, patterns, hoops etc. So it works as a pegboard kind of too.

I do much as Polly V9. I use a foam insulation panel covered with white flannel. I love it and use it daily. When my sewing room loses some furniture, I want to add a second panel so I can do larger work. Aging backs and knees don't like crawling on the floor but these panels can be simple leaned against the wall and are very, very light weight.

We had this conversation at my guild meeting this week. Many of the members use a plastic table cloth that has a flannel back. Lay out the pattern and then it can be rolled up for storage or travel to a quilt work day.

I don't have a design wall,but there are so many nice ideas on here.I like the window shade one.

Hi, I love this idea, as I don't have a good place to make a design wall. Could you send me a picture of it? I'm cherylmae
on this site. Thanks

My husband made one out of plywood that is 4x6 .it has flannel on the front and is higed in the middle so it can be folded up out of the way when notin use. I wish it could have been wider. Ceiling in that room is too low to make it much longer. For small projects I use a folding piece of card board made for science projects very inexpensive Diane

Did the roll-up shade, and yes, over a closet which housed my washer and dryer. It got in the way of laundry. Now different house, different state, and I have one of Fons and Porters design walls. Not big enough and yes, hangs over my bi-fold doors behind which are my washer and dryer. I also have to pin everything on it. So my suggestion is, the bigger the better and use something that the squares stick to, if you can find it.

I had a queen/king size piece of Warm & Natural that my husband nailed to a 2 X 4, then nailed it to the wall in the basement in my sewing center. I only have to use pins when I use denim, otherwise the cotton blocks stay up perfectly. If you could do something along those lines and make a "roman shade" type of pulley to it, would that work with the doors?