So You Wanna Know About the Blocking Board

I noticed on one of Susan’s posts a while back that she had what looked like a great blocking board, with nice grids on it. She told me it was just a cheap pattern board she bought at Jo-Ann’s, and that she was thinking she’d have to cover it with plastic if she used it for wet blocking.

That sounded like a great idea, so I planned to stop at Jo-Ann’s sometime and get one. As it turned out, I went to our one and only Hobby Lobby store for something else entirely, and just happened to see it. And all of the sewing accessories were on sale for 30% off. I forgot how much it was to start with – but I think it must have been $4.99 because I paid $3-and-change for it. I think it’s a little bit more at Jo-Ann’s, but of course, there’s always those 40% or 50% coupons.

 

 

Details: Wrights Pattern Cutting Board, 36″ x 60″. The grid is in inches, but there are also guidelines for centimeters.

Anyway, I used a roll of clear Contact paper, and with my husband’s help, covered the board. One roll wasn’t quite enough to cover the entire board, so rather than get another roll, he suggested that we just use some clear packing tape for the part that was left, which we did.

 

 

The best part is that it still folds up – I was careful to make sure to push the contact paper down into the grooves when I put it on. And while it doesn’t quite want to stay flat by itself now, I just remembered seeing a large, sturdy rubber band in the kitchen the other day. It’s just right for keeping it folded.

 

 

Both the tape and contact paper worked fine, although neither one went on wrinkle-free, despite our attempts at careful application. The packing tape was probably a little easier to put on since it’s in small strips, but it doesn’t have quite the “stretch” to it that the contact paper has, so it might not work as well for the “folds”.

I didn’t put the contact paper over the edges of the board, since I knew I might not have enough – so the contact paper only goes right to the edge of the cardboard. I don’t think that will be a problem, but if you had 2 rolls of contact paper, you could make the strips long enough to go over the edge and tack onto the back. For contact paper, I’d definitely suggest doing strips across the shorter side, rather than the longer side. That’s what I was going to do originally, but DH said we should do two long strips along the length since the width of two pieces of contact paper would just fit. Well, it did, but it was really, really hard to work with those long strips and keep it from wrinkling.