Jingle

I don't have much open wall space. I just use my bed for a big quilt. I use my jo ann's table for smaller quilts.

maviskw

I use my old fashioned quilt frame which my MIL used to tie quilts. It' queen sized. I pinned a flannel bed sheet to it. (My DD decided he did not like flannel sheets, so it a used sheet.) I found the blocks did not stick well on it, so was pinning my blocks to the flannel. What a pain.)

Now I bought a can of spray adhesive and lightly sprayed the entire front of it. That works.

RST

I like felt -- you can get it in very wide widths, so no need to piece it. It holds its shape better than flannel, in my experience, so no baggy or saggy distortion. And being a little thicker, it covers the foam insulation board well and gives a true white which helps photograph colors true as well as looking better.

JanieH

You always give such good advice and include your reasoning - I love reading your replies. You are my guru!

Z Any Mouse

I hung up a piece of flannel backed tablecloth with some thumb tacks (in case it needed to be taken down), and it works great. Many years later, I'm still using the same tablecloth and I have never taken it down, lol.

roserips

Having used the different fibers felt does not work at all to smooth and nothing for the fabric to hang on to. Fleece works great to pick up threads so a piece in your swifter cleans the floor, Flannel is wonderful but I tend to leave things up on my wall a while and a breeze or the weight will pull them down sooner or later. So I would rather use flannel to back my quilt. The insulation wall boards are fantastic, economical to purchase, easy to stick pins in and you don't really have to cover them.

tessagin

My design wall is portable. Flannel back tablecloth with the grid. I have a couple. I have 4 skirt hangers I can attach to them or not. I can easily transport them. Onto the bed on a wall, back of a door. I can hang them on my double window in my sewing room. Each table cloth was about $4 and the skirt hangers were about $1.00 a piece maybe $2. I've even hung them on my shower rod in my bath.

romille

I can't speak for felt, but I have done flannel and cotton batting.

I had some flannel yardage that I tacked to the wall one night just to try it out... worked well, but it was just a very temporary measure because my flannel was printed and pretty tacky looking up on the wall.

I went to Joann and got several yards of batting off a roll. My plan was to wrap it around foam insulation boards and mount those to the wall. I just used big flat thumbtacks (had them for mounting embroidery to stretch bars) and tacked it up to my wall floor to ceiling. I had meant for that to only be up a week or two until I could get around to fetching some insulation boards... but well, that was months ago.

The batting works great, probably a little better than the flannel did.


Tips/Notes:

1 - you want your design wall material to be taught against whatever you mount it to. Your fabric will stick to it better if it isn't hanging loose. You can google or search pinterest... there are lots of options for mounting temporary walls or making free standing walls

2 - I have white batting and it isn't a problem, but Kaffe Fasset makes a gridded gray flannel specifically for this purpose and claims that you shouldn't use white because the bright white can be "distracting"

Colleen3

I too bought the Fons and Porter design wall. I hung it on curtain rod but did not like the fact it did not lay smooth against wall. Took it off rod and used thumb tacks to secure it to wall. Works much better and more importantly my blocks don't fall off. I tried using the back of a vinyl tablecloth but after spending 2 1/2 hours deciding on proper placement of blocks I left them overnight so I could look at them in the daylight. Next morning I found over half of the blocks on the floor! Never again will I use that method for a design wall.

carolynjo

I also used no pill fleece. Works great for me.