DIY - Sliding Quilt Design Wall

I decided that I needed a design wall for my longarm room but I did not have the appropriate wall space for it because my longarm took a lot of space to have. I did however have a 7 foot wide area that would work in front of my walk in closet. We came up with the idea to purchase a 12 foot long barn door track to build the design wall on so that I would still have access to the door. We purchased our track on Amazon for $79. It did not need to be real heavy duty as the design wall is light weight.

The barn door track was installed above the closet going across the room to a brace my husband made on the wall that I later painted white as well. It worked great! This way I was able to slide the design wall to access my closet door and not lose the function of the closet.

The foam board I used is made from 2- 4'x8' sheets of purple insulation board (photo below). I cut both boards down easily with a knife so that when put together it came out to be 7'x7'. I then used Gorilla tape to tape down the center. (Gorilla Tape works fabulously)

Once I had the 2 boards taped together on both front and back sides, I purchased a king size package of batting I cut down the batting leaving enough to tape on the back side of the board about an inch on the backside. I added the quilt batting, smoothed it out and wrapped it around the edges of the board and then secured it again with the Gorilla Tape. (tip) cut squares out of each corner. This will help prevent bulk in the back and make adding the framing easier later on.

Once the batting was in place and taped down on all 4 sides. I had to sew two pieces of flannel together in order for it to be big enough to wrap around the entire board. I did this in the same manner as I did the flannel except leaving more extra on the back side and going past where I had taped the batting to the board prior to prevent bulking. It is very important that you make sure your flannel is snug and not loose by pulling gently before taping it down. I taped all the way down on all 4 sides.

The next step is adding the framing. I used 4 - 3"x 8' white poly resin frame boards because they are light weight. My husband was nice enough to cut all the pieces to size so they all lined up nicely with a 45 degree angle. It gave it a more nicer look. Once we had the boards cut we moved on to the back portion of the frame by using just normal smooth 3"x8' pieces of wood that we cut to the correct size. We did not put a 45 degree angle on them as they will not be seen. We then sandwiched the frame pieces with the flannel covered foam board in the middle and we began drilling holes through all 3 layer, (front of the frame, flannel covered board and back of frame) We started securing the frame to the board with the long screws starting with the top and bottom of frame then moved to the sides being sure to line up the front of the frame nicely. The size screws you need will depend on the thickness of your foam board you decide on and taking into consideration the thickness of the framing you will be using. We used screws that were quite a bit larger than what we needed and just took an angle grinder to them so they were flush with the back of the frame.

We had to add lag bolts to the top to affix the frame we just made to the barn door track we installed. Once we completed the frame and installation I took plain white caulk to fill in the holes from screws to give it a nicer, finished look.

This was a pretty inexpensive DIY and very few tools were needed to construct it. I love the fact I gained wall space by building a moving design wall.