Tip of the Morning Tuesday~ Cleaning your Design Wall

I cannot believe it has been soooo long since I shared a Tip of the Morning Tuesday with you. I have a great little tip this morning to share with you all.

If you are a quilter chances are that you have a design board. Whether that design board is as big as your wall or a portable one that you take to your machine to keep your block pieces in the proper order to help you sew; it probably is made with flannel or batting to hold the fabric in place, right? Well if you sew then you know how thread sticks like mad to flannel and batting and your clothing too. For years I used one of those masking tape sticky rollers to roll over my design board, my ironing board and myself too! It picks up the threads well enough, but never seems to get them all and I have to pull off the sticky tape too often and toss it and begin with a new tape. That costs money and you have waste and need to buy refills. But I have a better solution to share with you today.

Behold the silicone dish sponge. These silicone sponges are meant for hand washing dishes. You would think they might be great scrubbers for those dishes with the little bumpy scrubber-like bristles, but they really do not scrub the food off the dishes very well at all. They are great for using as sponges in terms that they do not collect bacteria like a normal type sponge does. You never need to toss this silicone sponge as it doesn't wear out either. It washes dishes okay if  you wash them immediately and nothing dries hard on them. But it just doesn't scrub anything really. I need a tougher scrubber for that job.

Anyhow, back to the tip and design board. What I did discover is that using a silicone sponge on a design board removes all those threads (and excess flannel or batting too) in a couple of easy swipes. Then you can pull off the lint and threads easily from the silicone sponge and toss it or save it to use as stuffing for pillows and pincushions and such. It has a little loop so you can hang it up near your design wall or board too. At least the one I bought has a loop. You can buy them at most stores that sell dish care products (I think). Check your dollar store as they will be the cheapest there. It might even work to remove cat or dog fur off of your pet? They do sell a similar product for that purpose. I do not have any pets now, so I cannot test this idea out, but if you do and it works, that would be another use for this sponge. But I would buy a separate sponge for each job.

My design board isn't too full of thread and lint here. But is has been a lot worse.

A few swipes with the silicone sponge and look at all the lint and thread it picked up. Mostly lint, since my board wasn't as full of thread at the moment.

Easily pulls off the sponge to toss or  save to stuff a pillow with.

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