Design Board

Found this on another forum. Sounds like an easy inexpensive way. . .

The design board is easy and fun to put together. Here’s how:

First, go to Lowe’s or another home store and purchase a piece of 1.5″ thick rigid foam insulation board. Where we live they only sell it in 4′ x 8′ sheets, and you can’t buy a half sheet, but at Lowe’s they’ll cut it in half for you, making 2 – 4′ x 4′ pieces. You can then make two of these design boards, or share the extra piece with a friend and cut your cost in half, like Cindy did. The foam board is about $20 with tax, so costs about $10 per design board.

Buy, or dig through your stash and find sufficient cheap white flannel to cover the board and wrap around the back. You can get plain white flannel pretty inexpensively at Joanne’s or maybe Wal-mart in 120″ width, or you can piece smaller leftover pieces together like Cindy did.

Press the flannel and then lay it out on the floor. Plop the foam board down on top of it. Wrap the flannel to the back on all four sides and fasten with brads, nails, staples, T-pins or whatever you have, stretching it slightly to make it tight across the front of the board.

And there you have it, your new design board!

Sounds easy enough.
My design wall is a piece of flannel backed vinyl tablecloth fabric the top is supported to the wall with a furring strip that i deco painted, there are a few screws holding it up. to the face of the furring strips I have long nails at an angle, from these I hang rulers, scissors, patterns, rotary cutters etc.
My problem is that I don't have enough wall space because I had to put a dresser in front of the wall so it cut down on my space. I sew in a converted childs bedroom.

My design board is very similar, except I'm lucky enough to have a really long wall that I could free up. I used two 4 x 8 foot sheets and covered with batting. It was the widest, cheapest thing I could find. I did have to cut a rectangular hole in it though because there is an outlet in the wall. I then put children's safety plugs in the outlet and covered a foam piece with batting and stuck it in the hole. The best thing about it is when making scrappy quilts. You can put it on the design board, step back and see where you have too many darks or lights together, to identical fabrics, etc.

My design wall is a small piece of flannel tacked on a very small piece of wall. Natalie has her little 9-patches hanging on it right now! I may just have to go to Lowe's and buy this.

Thanks for the wonderful tip! Merry Christmas to myself!

These work really well. I have the 2 halves and we use them in the little building where we have our little weekly sewing group. I used old flannel back vinyl tableclothes and they were a perfect fit.

I used a piece of foam board that was packing in the oven and covered it in muslin to make a pin board, it worked really well. I finally hung plain curtains on a rod over my wall unit shelves and I can draw them and use as a design board/wall, thats worked well too. The other day at the local govt offices I saw they had done the whole back wall (just remodelled) above the counter in some kind of board, looked like MDF/craftboard so the whole thing is a pin board. Was unpainted but got me thinking about when I put my sewing room back together

That's the way I made mine way back when. It went away in the move.