WELL, IT'S ABOUT TIME . . .

. . . that I figure out a way to have a "design board" for my quilting. Since I don't have a room devoted to my sewing, I have always preferred to keep my sewing / quilting contained in my laundry room which is large enough to accommodate my sewing machine table and cutting table (which admittedly I have folded most of the time). But there's no real wall space left for a good design board. I like using the laundry room, 'cause I don't have to put things away between sewing sessions.

So when I have to make a quilt plan, I've been putting a flannel backed vinyl tablecloth on the floor in the living room to "plan" and then drag it to the hallway outside the laundry room for my assembly. (Well, until yesterday, I was walking back and forth to the living room.)

I do sometimes sew in the basement family room, using my smaller sewing machine on a game table. As I was doing a bit of sewing there yesterday, I got to thinking as I looked at this wall hanging, "Certainly there is a way I can devise a temporary design board there." And EUREKA, I designed a design board:

I started out with a 4 foot wooden dowel (a bit too narrow for the cloth, but it had to do) placed in an open "hem" at one end of the tablecloth. The wall hanging is a bit high for my 5'4" frame, so I used wire coat hangars to hang it from the wall hanging rod. Not wanting to damage the art (It's painted leather), I put almost-empty paper towel rolls over the wire hangars. When I went to the garage to get some masking tape to wrap around the paper towels to keep them in place, I spied a 5' 1/4" steel rebar in the corner. A little heavy, but the perfect size! So out of the hem came the wooden dowel and in went the rebar. After getting it in place, I padded the extending ends of the rebar with scrap quilt batting. Perfect fit to reach the "folds" of the hangars. And it works like a charm.

And no, I'm not putting it away before I go to bed tonight! Not expecting company any time soon, so I'm just going to have to live with the family room not being tidy. Just using it for a couple of my blocks (that's a disappearing 9 patch) makes me realize it's well worth giving up having the room neat all the time. But it will be easy to put away when I need to.

I also realized that I can lay the hang my new device on the ironing board rack in my laundry room. Down side to that, though: about 1/2 of the flannel is behind the cutting table. Not very convenient, and not much room to move around if I change the position of the cutting table. So I think this will be a new quilt assembly place for me. An up side to that too: I can watch TV at the same time!

OK, I've convinced myself. It was a great decision!

This is a quilt that I completed a couple weeks ago--another disappearing 9 patch, with sashing.

And of course I'm still knitting. This is the start of the sweater (front laying on top of back) that I'm making for my almost 2 year old grandson.

Enough chatter from me; gotta get back downstairs and play with my new design board!