Multi-purpose Table

our 6 foot table with the 4 foot Art Quilter frame, leaves room for storage and doodling

We sell a purpose built table to go with our Art Quilter and NEQ2 frames. It comes in 6, 8 or 10 foot 7 inch lengths to fit our Art Quilter and NEQ2 frames.  It's specially constructed to minimize the vibration caused by the sewing machine yet light enough for girls to move around. And is sets up and takes down in minutes. We custom cut the table legs to fit the height of each customer so the table height is comfortable and provides the ideal quilting surface.  Last week we decided to give our table a new paint job.

Two coats of Blackboard paint! We tried it out first on this magnetic white board that had been stained by using the wrong pens. It worked great. But we thought it would be better to mimic the shape of the quilt loaded on the frame. So we decided to paint the table top.

Now we can use the tabletop for practising line designs.Drawing the designs on the table top uses exactly the same movements as machine quilting the designs.We're using the same kind of pens that restaurants use to write the daily specials on the blackboard menu. the pens come in bright colours and wash off with water.

If you want the same effect for less trouble you can throw a roll of paper across the top of the table for doodle practice. Early Learning Centre sells rolls of paper. That's a lot of joy for £3.50 and you can use both sides.

By doodling the designs first the machine quilting turns out much much better!

We tried two kinds of paint. This Blackfriar paint from the local hardware store needed terps to clean the brushes but gave a nice finish. The Funky  Colours chalkboard paint from B&Q also worked well and was water based so easier to clean the brushes. Pinterest is full of neat ideas for Blackboard paint. Here's a link to find a recipe for making any colour paint into chalk board paint.   Kate's Centsationalgirl blogpost gives the pros and cons of homemade vs store bought paints and show lots of ways to use them. I wonder what the table would look like in blue? So many possibilities! It might be fun to choose a colour and paint your own.