Monday, January 24, 2011

Design Wall Monday - how about a design wall itself

I've decided to join in on Judy's Design Wall Mondays but there was only one problem, I don't have a design wall. So I carried myself over to The Home Depot today among other places that I needed to run to today, and I bought some pvc pipes and elbows and stuff. Didn't spend but $20 on all of it and I have enough for two design walls, one big one and one smaller one. I only made the bigger one because I needed that first, the smaller is for traveling to retreats and sew days. I bought five 10 foot lengths of 3/4 inch pvc pipes - four 90 degree elbows, four 3-way split/connectors, 4 end caps and some reducers to make it all fit. I cut, with a hacksaw, one 10 foot pcv lenght in half, so I have two 5 foot lenghts. I cut two of the 10 foot lenghts to 7 feet each, leaving two 3 foot lengths for the base. I loosely fit it all together and whalla, I have a frame for some flannel fabric and I'll have a design wall. Total time to cut and put these suckers together, maybe 1/2 hour. EDITED: I did not use glue, so I can take this apart and get it out of the way in the multi-purpose room where is lives now and also to take on retreat so we can have an easy vertical design space. I sewed up the flannel rather quickly too - I cut a lenght of flannel I had in half and serged it together in the middle; then I measured the design wall and added 4.5 inches all the way around to give me the rod pockets I would sew. I then cut my flannel to size, measured in 4.5 inches all the way around, folded the raw edges in to that 4.5 in mark, zig-zagged a rod-pocket in each side, cut the corners and reinforced the corners with some exta zig zag stitches and whalla, it was done. As I said, constructions maybe 1/2 hour, measuring, sewing and putting it all together, maybe 1 hour or 1.5 hours total, there was dinner somewhere in between some of the steps this evening.



And here it is in use this evening. I dug out some 5" strips of modern fabrics from a swap I participated in on Swapbot.com - I want to create a modern brick pattern quilt - I just need to decide on sashing between each 5x6.75 block or not... i'm envisioning a smoky gray sashing... tbd.




9 comments:

Marti said...

That is a great idea. Is it portable or did you glue the corner pieces to the straight pipe?

Alycia said...

What a great idea!! I am forward your post to my hubby - he should be inpsired!!!

I looke forward to seeing many quilts on there!!

whimzeestitches said...

No glue so yes, this is portable Marti. I have added some edits to my post above.

AnnieO said...

Nice breakdown on the construction--sure is good to have a design wall. I am currently without one and do miss it (mine was a flannel backed tablecloth hung on the wall). It would be really hard for me to get 10' lengths of anything home in my car!

Lane said...

Way to go! I love the idea and the construction is simple but should be effective for a long time. Lane

Chris said...

Great design wall!! For many years my uneducated family called my design wall a livingroom floor LOL

Erika Mulvenna said...

This is a great idea, thanks for sharing! Have you also seen all the great quilting and sewing ideas at www.WeAllSew.com?

Rose Marie said...

Very, very clever ..... many thanks for the tip!

Featheronawire Sally Bramald said...

Brilliant!