My New Design Wall

I finally have a design wall!  Up to now, I have been using the "design bed" to lay my blocks out before sewing them together.  The design bed is a large piece of white flannel I lay on top of our queen size bed.  The real problem with it is that I need to fold it up and put it away at night to go to bed.  I got some ideas from a few blogs and turned this "before"

into an "after."

The tubs of fabric and the straw hats went into attic storage and my husband removed the hooks from the wall.  The room I sew in is a bedroom that doubles as our guest room.  This section of wall is six feet wide, between the closet door on the left and the window at the corner of the adjacent wall.  The entrance to the room is to the left of the closet door. 

I had two 4' by 8' pieces of insulation board (purchased at Home Depot, in the lumber section) trimmed down to 3' by 7' to better fit the space.  I "bound" the edges with duct tape and taped the two pieces together along the long edge, also with duct tape, putting the tape on just one side so it acts like a hinge and the two pieces fold together, right side facing in.  Making the wall fold in half makes it more portable in case I want to move it around, plus I can take it down and store it under the bed when a guest uses the room.  In use, it just leans against the wall. 

I used spray adhesive to apply a piece of batting, which I then trimmed at the edges.  That part did not go as smoothly as I hoped and the batting actually tore in one spot.  So it is a little rough but it functions. 

You can see five blocks from my current project hanging there, without any pins.  After taking this photo, I finished five more blocks and have blocks 11 to 15 in process.  This design wall is going to be a godsend when it comes time to add the sashing and sew it all together!