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in which Megaera is ingenious
Jun. 14th, 2013 05:01 pmWell, sorta.
My design wall died yesterday. What is a design wall, you ask? It's a vertical surface upon which to arrange quilt blocks so that you can stand back and look at them, and decide if indeed that is the arrangement you actually want to use. Normally they're made of flannel or quilt batting wrapped around some sort of hard surface. Mine was not. It was a commercial product made of thin fleecy fabric with a sort of removable adhesive on either side, made to be mounted on a wall. My mother gave it to me as a gift not long after I moved into this condo almost nine years ago now.
It worked really well for most of the time I owned it, and gradually collected a rather modern-arty-looking collection of threads which looked kind of cool. It also gradually got less and less sticky on the side that showed, and about a year ago I had to start using pins to hold the blocks onto the surface. Then, a couple of months ago, the thing started peeling off the wall. Yesterday, finally, about half of it came loose altogether and basically dumped itself onto my head. So I pulled the rest of it down (I will say one thing -- the package had said it wouldn't damage the finish on the wall and it didn't) and it went into the garbage.
Now, as far as I've been able to tell, they don't make this kind of design wall fabric anymore, and I don't think I'd buy it if they did because I didn't really like the sticky stuff. So I decided to make a more traditional design wall. I found a nice, thick, fuzzy flannel sheet at Goodwill this afternoon, then I went to McLendons (my local version of a cross between Home Depot and a real old-fashioned hardware store -- it has the size and prices of the former and the service of the latter, so I patronize them whenever possible). I asked about foam insulation boards, which is what's recommended for the purpose on a lot of quilting blogs. I was shown some -- very, very pink, but that's okay, the sheet will cover them -- inch-thick, two or four foot by eight foot sheets of insulation board.
I looked at them. I thought about my little Ford Focus. And then I looked at them again. I thought about anyone I knew who might have access to a truck, and came up empty. I wanted the size (AAMOF, what I wanted to do was tape three of the 2x8 foot sheets together to make a folding version), so cutting them down below six feet was not going to work.
Then I lifted one. They weigh practically nothing. And I thought about the mile and a half between my house and McLendon's.
And so, reader, I had the nice lady in the lumber department cut them down to seven feet long (to fit the height of the ceiling in my sewing room) and then wrap strips of shrink-wrap around them to bundle them together while I drove the car home and walked back, and then I carried those three bright pink panels of foam core home.
Gods know what the people on Canyon Road and/or the folks on the freeway (I had to cross an overpass) thought about the crazy lady and her sheets of bright pink foam core, but hey, it's not the most ridiculous thing I've ever done.
And tomorrow I will tape the foam core together (the guy in the fastener department recommended single-sided carpet tape as opposed to duct tape) and staple the sheet over it, lean it on my sewing room wall, and voila! I'll have a new design wall!
My design wall died yesterday. What is a design wall, you ask? It's a vertical surface upon which to arrange quilt blocks so that you can stand back and look at them, and decide if indeed that is the arrangement you actually want to use. Normally they're made of flannel or quilt batting wrapped around some sort of hard surface. Mine was not. It was a commercial product made of thin fleecy fabric with a sort of removable adhesive on either side, made to be mounted on a wall. My mother gave it to me as a gift not long after I moved into this condo almost nine years ago now.
It worked really well for most of the time I owned it, and gradually collected a rather modern-arty-looking collection of threads which looked kind of cool. It also gradually got less and less sticky on the side that showed, and about a year ago I had to start using pins to hold the blocks onto the surface. Then, a couple of months ago, the thing started peeling off the wall. Yesterday, finally, about half of it came loose altogether and basically dumped itself onto my head. So I pulled the rest of it down (I will say one thing -- the package had said it wouldn't damage the finish on the wall and it didn't) and it went into the garbage.
Now, as far as I've been able to tell, they don't make this kind of design wall fabric anymore, and I don't think I'd buy it if they did because I didn't really like the sticky stuff. So I decided to make a more traditional design wall. I found a nice, thick, fuzzy flannel sheet at Goodwill this afternoon, then I went to McLendons (my local version of a cross between Home Depot and a real old-fashioned hardware store -- it has the size and prices of the former and the service of the latter, so I patronize them whenever possible). I asked about foam insulation boards, which is what's recommended for the purpose on a lot of quilting blogs. I was shown some -- very, very pink, but that's okay, the sheet will cover them -- inch-thick, two or four foot by eight foot sheets of insulation board.
I looked at them. I thought about my little Ford Focus. And then I looked at them again. I thought about anyone I knew who might have access to a truck, and came up empty. I wanted the size (AAMOF, what I wanted to do was tape three of the 2x8 foot sheets together to make a folding version), so cutting them down below six feet was not going to work.
Then I lifted one. They weigh practically nothing. And I thought about the mile and a half between my house and McLendon's.
And so, reader, I had the nice lady in the lumber department cut them down to seven feet long (to fit the height of the ceiling in my sewing room) and then wrap strips of shrink-wrap around them to bundle them together while I drove the car home and walked back, and then I carried those three bright pink panels of foam core home.
Gods know what the people on Canyon Road and/or the folks on the freeway (I had to cross an overpass) thought about the crazy lady and her sheets of bright pink foam core, but hey, it's not the most ridiculous thing I've ever done.
And tomorrow I will tape the foam core together (the guy in the fastener department recommended single-sided carpet tape as opposed to duct tape) and staple the sheet over it, lean it on my sewing room wall, and voila! I'll have a new design wall!
