Finally... a Design Wall!

I was so excited this week when I finally figured out how I could incorporate a design wall into my sewing space.  I sew in the basement of our little house, a room that used to be our family room, but which I took over after our boys left home and it was no longer needed for a teenage gathering place! Although I am still working on getting better lighting for it, I love this space because there is lots of room and no need to clean up every mess I make!  (I do clean it up once in awhile, I promise!) The one thing it has always been missing is room for a design wall, and I have always made do with the design FLOOR instead.  It has worked for me, but with wanting to spend more time working on my Scrap Vortex quilt, a place to lay everything out and be able to leave it up and mull it over on a daily basis was sorely needed!

So what did I figure out?  We still have a fairly large wooden entertainment cabinet down there, and I realized I could drape a king-sized flannel sheet over the top of it, pin back the sides, and set a couple of heavy items on top to hold the sheet on, and it worked!  Below you see my Scrap Vortex as it is right now, and I have loved being able to leave it up all week as I've added blocks to it so that I can see how it is developing.  

My Scrap Vortex quilt is coming right along, and is about 40 x 50 right now.  Still not big enough, so I keep working on adding on to it.  I think of it as "building" a quilt!

This week, I also decided to join in a little paper-pieced quilt along with Faith at Fresh Lemons, and it will be a great use for scraps!  She is generously sharing several paper-piecing patterns for some adorable spool blocks in a series she is calling "Fresh Spools."  Week 1's block looks like this:

These blocks are finishing at 6 x 6 inches.  I haven't done any paper-piecing since I finished up my And Sew On BoM quilt with Quiet Play back in 2013, and I had forgotten how fun it is!  I'm looking forward to experimenting with different low volume backgrounds and colors for the spools themselves.  I started with the blue for this spool because I have so much of it, and love the way it turned out!

Happy Sunday sewing to everyone!  Linking up to Oh Scrap! at Quilting is More Fun than Housework.