Quilt Walls - A Tutorial For A Simple An Inexpensive Quilt Wall

Quilt Walls help quilters audition fabrics, layout blocks, plan borders, and simply help make the quilting assembly process a much easier activity.   They can be made out of all sorts of materials and in a variety of sizes.  Today, I want to share with you insights on a very inexpensive quilt wall, as well insights on a few other tutorials for creating quilt walls.

IKEA has some hardware that can make it easy and inexpensive to install a quilt wall.  As I have limited space in my little sewing room, I wanted a way to have a quilt wall that was also easy to move as it needed to be placed in front of existing wall-to-wall cabinets.  This approach won't be appropriate for everyone, but I wanted to share it for those that it might help.  I haven't yet tested it, but I'm pretty confident this hardware would also work to hang/display a finished quilt too!

I'll admit my DH installed this for me, but anyone that knows how to find ceiling & wall joists and use an electric drill could easily do this.

Dignitet Curtain Wire is a stainless steel set for $12.99, semi-ready to mount to ceiling or wall (where semi means you need your own screws).  The Dignitet was installed a few inches down from the ceiling, on two parallel walls.



Dignitet Support $4.99 provides extra support when you are doing a very wide quilt wall (mine is at ceiling height with a width of 172").  As I was striving to maximum the size of my quilt wall, I opted to use two Dignitet support brackes (2 per package).  These were installed on the ceiling, along the line where the two Dignetet Curtain brackets were installed on the walls.  The wire cable that comes in the Dignitet Curtain Wire kit was strung thru the appropriate holes in the four Dignitet brackets and set screws were used to tighten the wire before using wire cutters to clip any excess.

All Dignitets were mounted where the ceiling and/or wall joists existed vs mounting a dignitet directly into the dry wall.  This will allow this curtain wire system to hold more weight, which will easily support requirements for a quilt wall and should also work for displaying a large finished quilt too!


Rigtig Curtain hooks come in a 24 pack for $2.99.  I used one package, evening placing them on the wire.

I currently have a queen size Hobbs batting that I purchased at Michaels, using a 50% off coupon for an out the door price of $9.  Due to the width of the curtain wires (mine is 172"), I may end up with two separate pieces of batting, each with a width of ~86" should I want more than one project on my quilt wall, or to help with king size quilts!  It was also easy to place the batting into the Rigtig Curtain hooks, but I may later stitch some fabric to one end and place this side into the Rigtig curtain hooks.

Total cost of this quilt wall using the curtain wire & hooks from IKEA, along with batting from Michaels: $30

Install time:  ~1 hour.  Most of the install time is spent is checking to make sure you are tapping into ceiling joists vs just dry wall, the rest is pretty fast!

Again, this inexpensive quilt wall takes up minimal space in my sewing room.  As I don't have a free wall, this is placed close to my wall-to-wall cabinets.  I can slide the batting on the wire to get inside of most of the cabinets, but as I don't plan on leaving my quilt wall up all the time, I'm happy with the compromise between accessing my cabinets quickly vs limited space in my sewing room.  Plus, the cost was minimal.

What do you think?


Quilt in a Day also has a great tutorial to make 4'x8' quilt wall panels using sound boards, headliner material and other supplies.  I really like this type of quilt wall, but unfortunately my little sewing room doesn't have the space.  

You may also want to check out my prior post about Portable Design Walls.