Duct Tape......Who Knew!!!!/Design Wall Tutorial

Well, all you handymen, of course.....but was I listening, well frankly, NO.  I'm now officially a Duct Tape convert.

I've been putting off making this design wall forever.Why you may or may not ask....how hard can it be?? Well the answer is, there are two ways to do everything...the hard way and the easy way. I've made design walls before and trust me, I took the hard way. I came up with yesterday's floppy design wall because I wanted to avoid making the whole covered insulation type. But oh how I love a firm design wall versus a floppy one....alright take your minds out of the gutter. 

The reason I hated making this type of design wall, was that I actually tried gluing the batting to the insulation board with a glue gun....things melted...well dah!! My next approach was the staple gun, it got the job done, but a real pain to do.

Did doing the things the hard way end there.....well, what do you think? After covering these lovely insulation boards, they must be mounted....I thought sticky tape Velcro, maybe not. After stapling Velcro to the walls...to the boards and my fingers, the design wall was done and is still hanging...but not fun.

So after arranging and rearranging my West Coast Studio, in order to incorporate a design wall I was still trying to avoid the task of actually making one....a FIRM one, that you can stick pins in.....to combat that open window thing.


Last night I decided to bite the bullet and made plans to go to Home Depot. Just as I was about to leave,  Sandie emailed and reminded me of her fabulous tutorial on design walls. Rereading her tutorial got me thinking and reminded me of a few other tips I had read, since my earlier design wall fiasco. Believe it or not, I actually enjoyed making my wall this afternoon and I still have enough energy, left over, to share what worked for me.

I bought a package of six insulation boards, 3/4" x 14 1/2" x 48". The larger boards with the tongue and groove edges in Sandie's tutorial, were nowhere insight...so I went with I had used before. 

Supplies:

505 Temporary Fabric Adhesive

Insulation Boards

Duct Tape

Command  Picture Hanging Strips

Level

Batting

 

Cut strips of batting large enough to wrap around the edges of the boards. I wrap each board individually.

Spray some of the fabric adhesive onto the batting....this is really helpful for getting the batting on nice and smooth. 

 

Smooth the batting onto the board. 

Turn the board with the attached batting over and clip the the corners. 

Turn the edges of the batting to the other side of the board....this is where you will really appreciate the adhesive. Here I'm thankful to Sandie for mentioning the use of adhesive, in the first place. 

And here comes the use of the magical Duct Tape!! Just tape the edges of the batting down with Duct Tape. I don't remember where I read this tip, but it is fabulous. 

 

 Another fabulous tip, that I read somewhere else, in blog land is...Command Picture Hanging Strips. They work like a charm. If I find my boards on the floor in the morning, I'll let you know.....maybe I should check if everything is still hanging.

 Note: Attach the command strips as in the photo....half on the tape and the other on the board. This is how I attach mine and haven't had any fall of the wall yet (Sept 2/2013).

Using a level, draw a line, on the wall, where you want the top of your design wall to be. 

 Then just keep mounting as many boards as you need. I mounted four and covered the remaining two boards, from the package and left them free standing, for small projects. To me a firm empty design wall reminds me of a canvas just waiting for someone to create on. The wonky ones just don't do it for me.



Strange...considering how much I love wonky quilts.