Full disclosure… this quilting room belongs to my mom and is in my parent’s townhouse. They recently downsized from a larger home but having space for my mom to quilt was very important when finding a new house. They moved in, four days later my dad was in a car accident and broke four ribs and his shoulder all while getting ready to tear out the kitchen and renovate it and one of the bathrooms. Not the easiest time! The quilting room quickly became the dumping ground for everything that needed to be out of the way and was shuffled around many times over. You would be correct in assuming that there was no quilting over this time. When the renovations were complete and Christmas was over, I was so happy to finally get my hands on this room. The carpet had previously been ripped up so new flooring had to be put down and we wanted to paint it before the organizing began.
The first thing that has to be done in all organizing jobs is taking everything out… in this case, this was a lot of everything. It all got moved into the dining room and living room and I tried to put it into categories as best as possible so that my mom could make decisions quick and easy.
My dad and I put the flooring down (not normally part of my services 😂) and my brother’s girlfriend painted the room in half a day (way faster than I am!). Once that was all done and we had purged, decluttered and decided what was going back in I got to work with the organization. We had a lot of the cabinets already from her previous quilting room but they needed to be repacked and put in place. Then the smaller items went back. This part took about a day and a half (in total, the entire project start to finish was four days). My assistant, in this case my 8 year old, made the labels (I’m teaching him well!) and we labeled what was in each drawer so that whenever my mom is quilting it’s easy for her to find what she needs. If knows where everything is then her creativity can keep flowing without interruption.
Separate drawers were purchased later on to put her current projects in so all the pieces stay together and she can switch back and forth as needed. But, perhaps my absolute favorite part of the entire space is the rolling bar I had my dad build underneath her cutting table for the very large roll of backing that she buys. This keeps it off the floor, out of the way and very easy for her to use. She has been putting this room to great use since it was finished and she is catching up on all the baby quilts she has missed over the past year!
