I made my own blocking board. It was so easy and cheap. Here’s how I did it:

I went to the fabric store and got 3 yards of 1″ gingham fabric. Total cost of fabric was around $7.

I went to Home Depot and bought two ceiling tiles. I found them in the building materials section over by the insulation. I got the ones that were rectangular instead of square. They are a little bigger so they can hold larger items. total cost was just under $10. I wrapped the edges of the tile with duct tape. This was to help smooth out the edges and to keep it from falling apart as easily.

Next I used a right angle tool to make some marks on the board. This was so that I could make sure that my fabric was somewhat squared up on the board.

Then I lined up the fabric on the marks I made and smoothed it out. Once it was fairly straight, I stapled it down and folded it over to the back side of the tile. On the back I also stapled it down and covered the edges of the fabric with more duct tape.

That’s it. I repeated the whole process with the second tile. I still have some fabric left over but I definitely needed the 3 yards for coverage. Below is my final board with some granny squares blocking on it. To view the whole series of photos check out my flickr set: knits.blocking board