Before and After: Garage as Quilters Paradise

I saw this post from Lifehacker.com, a blog I follow. This crafty lady converted her garage into a fantastic quilting studio! It took $1,200, five-friends and 3-days to complete the project. To have a crafting studio to put all my knitting, painting, jewellry, cards etc in would be a dream! It would be like I was an official crafter. I could almost make it my job and quit my day job! Well almost. (Don't panic J-man - I shan't be making any rash decisions here even if it is a Monday). :-)



Here's how you build a workable full-time quilting space from a living room and garage packed with moving boxes, giving 3 generations of east-coast family some breathing room in their newly-combined west-coast home:

• 3-day weekend
• 5 friends
• $975 worth of TROFAST storage from Ikea: 8 tall shelf units, 6 short shelf units, 51 small buckets (perfect for small fabric squares), 30 medium buckets, 8 large buckets
• $150 dumpster rental
• 4 levels of 6-foot Elfa shelves (already in the garage)
• 2 existing bookcases (for decades worth of quilting magazines and books)
• 36 squares of FLOR carpet, "bright stripes" and "bright solids," on wicked clearance sale, less than $15/6, found by scouring 5 different Target stores in Southern California
• 1 existing Koala sewing table

The end result of all the labor is both highly functional and visually appealing. It wasn't a dirt cheap or simple fix, but the final product definitely shows that real effort, planning, and investment was put into the project.

The completed quilting room keeps 50+ years of quilting materials all in one space, with great indirect light from the garage door and spot lighting at the sewing table ... Privacy for the quilter in the garage. Safety for the pre-schoolers in the house. Sanity returned to the family.