The perfect dream sewing studio
 

If you could have the perfect dream sewing studio, what would it be like? How big would it be? What would you have in it? Would it be in your house or outside your home on your property? What would it look like? What colors would the walls be? What would the theme be? What would be your favorite items in the room? How much lighting would you have and how many windows?

Lots of different quilts on the walls. I see pictures of so many quilt rooms that don't display finished quilts.

First the room would be at least 24' x 24' with 9 foot ceilings. Laminate flooring with an area rug. Comfortable stuffed chair and ottoman. South and East triple windows. One complete wall of seven foot tall enclosed shelving with barn-door style doors and open to the ceiling for displaying trinkets. Six foot square center island that has adjustable height top for cutting, with cutouts for machines (2), an ironing station, drawers and sitting area on all sides with outlets. Television, stereo, PC, and phone. Plenty of ceiling can lights and large ceiling fan. This room would be on the top floor at one end of the house.

I'm happy with my sewing space. It's not perfect but if I had my ultimate dream studio I'd have to have my dream house first. I wouldn't want to drive a rolls royce and live in a trailer park. LOL.

First it would be separate from the house, I actuallly almost bought the small house next door for my studio, someone beat me to it. I think about the size of a two car garage would be large enough. Log Cabin style on the outside with a wraparound porch. Inside would be painted sandy and white trim. All tables and such would be white or cream. No real set color sceme just tons of my quilts hanging around. Skylights and large windows for natural lighting, lots of recessed and track lighting. Built in fabric closets. Sewing machine center(table) for all of my sewing machines. A nice rocking chair and foot stool for hand work. Light table, drafting easle, design wall, 2 wash tubs, washer and dryer, bathroom, stereo with surround sound, computer desk, 4x8 table for cutting and such with storage underneath, ironing station with a presser. And of course a brand new Gammill the biggest and most expensive one they have. Maybe we better have a bigger building!

amazingly, 2 of the ladies in one of my quilting groups has a whole 'nuther HOUSE for their quilting stuff. In both cases it was a house across the street or next door that was foreclosed and purchased at a good price.

20x20 might be big enough for me, I think. A skylight, lots of windows. Center island for cutting and ironing with storage underneath. Built-in cabinets for fabric, thread. Sewing machine in cabinets around the perimeter, allowing ample room for sewing on each. A separate table for serger(s) and embroidery machine. Computer, TV, radio/cd player. Book shelves for my sewing/quilting books. The largest quilting machine/frame with all the latest features. Oh, and while we're dreaming, might as well throw in the largest embroidery machine with all the latest features. :o

I would need a place large enough to have a nice large bedroom. I would store my fabrics, tools & such in there, do my cutting in there, but I love being with my DH while sewing, so would probably choose a corner of the livingroom to actually sew. However I live in a motorhome, so the chance of my getting one is nil I'm afraid.

20 x 20' is good, as long as you have an additional place for your washer/dryer there also. Not too many windows, or windows on at least 2 sides so you can have the light w/o fading your quilts. I use those Joann folding tables with the brakes on their wheels (I put industrial velcro in the place where the legs go into the table top to insure the legs don't move when I don't want them to). Four of those is perfect for me (I've had them for 10 years now). You need shelves up to the ceiling for your sorted stash... the upper ones are for the "categories" you won't use often. I use a garage cupboard for larger pieces, stacked by color, and matching boxes for the "odd" things, like small (fat quarters) that are very specific (bugs, butterflys, trucks, buttons, etc.). Don't forget 10 or 20 stackable clear plastic storage drawers (in their own frames) for color separating your scraps (these are great because you can wiggle the drawers out and put the ones you are interested in onto your table and dig through them, matching up different fabrics). I also have an ironing board as well as a flat ironing board (I use old pillow cases for it's covering... just to give you an idea of its size). You must have a quilt wall... I use two insultation boards held together by an old sheet only so I can fold it into an 8'x4' space when I don't need it. Frankly, I'd rather have it 8x8 all the time, but I don't have the room for that. I don't put any distractions like radio or tv in my sewing room because I don't want the noise, but that's just me. If you are married you need to insert a husband who is proud that you quilt! Good luck with your plans!

I am quite content with my little corner of the bedroom.I cut on the dining room table and work wherever space allows..I know if I had a bigh beautiful studio, I would just make a BIGGER mess than I do now!!

I have a room that is very nice. Walls are a very faint peachy yellow and the trim work is midnight blue. Lots of recessed lights. Laminate floor with built in cushioning. White furniture which houses fabric and books. A quilt rack for two finished quilts, and a 4'x6 design wall and a 4 x 8 peg board. The laundry room is adjacent. Only thing I would like to add is a bathroom to the laundry room. I have my cat (helper) too.

I would love to have a rather industrial-looking loft (away from my house) to do my quilting in. Then I could drag stuff out & never worry about it being in the way. I'd have skylights & big floor-to-ceiling windows. There would be well-worn wooden floors. Tables all over the place... big ones, like library tables. Floor-to-ceiling shelves for my fabric storage. A couple of design walls. All different types of lighting (overhead, spot, task). A fridge. A mircowave. Oh... I think I just described Heaven... LOL!

A whole other house, I wish I just had a whole other room other than a small corner in my bedroom to quilt

It would be 30 x30, moss green walls, white trim, medium oak laminate flooring, large white wall cabinets with glass fronts for my fabrics which would all be neatly arranged by colors and style, a 6x6 cutting table, a walk in closet for storage of bulky items, a row of counter with replaceable cut outs to fit all of my machines and a removable extension table to hook on the front edge of the counter so I could attach it when I am working on a heavy quilt or FMQ. My lighting would be daylight fluorescent and some incandescent lights. I'd have a large vintage look ceiling fan with no lights on it, I would also have electric outlets with 4 receptacles and built in surge protectors, a small laundry area with a washer, dryer, utility sink, and an ironing station. I'd also have a large antique Grandfather clock in the corner. No, I haven't really thought about it much at all...

I'll take this one! LOL

Right now I have a 9'x12' compact room.....it contains my sewing table (which folded is 20"x4'....opened can reach 4'x7' and built by hubby), which holds machine, cutting board and notions needed at the time.

I also have my corner computer desk with both computer and TV, printer right next to it and hubby also built me floor to ceiling shelving on two walls.

I have one small closet but in it, have two canvas hanging sweater bags of which each has 6-12"x12' cubicles....wonderful for my fabric.

I also have a hanging canvas shoe bag which has 10-5 1/2"x12"cubicles which are perfect for the containers which hold all my little PPing scraps. I use the containers from cold cuts and can fit two on each shelf.

So you see, small can be great and a plus is that when it's this small, one must keep it organized of one could lose a lot.
lololol

A room without cats

A big round room with windows almost all the way (the windows have that reflective glass the deflects some of the heat, but lets the light in). Set up with my sewing machine, long arm machine, cabinets and cutting table, a tv and radio or cd player.

I have the top room above the garage - 34' x 28' I think. The staircase is 4'9" wide so I can get furniture up there to practice upholstery. There is a shower room and a recessed kitchen with a deep craft sink along the south wall leaving the rest of the space for a studio. If we have lots of guests staying over I can retreat there and be perfectly self-contained.
At one end of the room I have a stove with two couches, a television and CD player and window seats that hide bedding and craft items I don't need to get at very often. Under the built in corner TV table I've stashed my photography stuff - frames and card making things - and I've velcroed a curtain there to hide the mess. There are floor-to-ceiling shelves for books and magazines in that corner too.
Along the north wall there are five windows overlooking the garden and on the opposite wall is a design frame. In the recess created by the staircase I have shelving for fabric and very narrow shelving for jars of notions.
I use the kitchen shelving for overflow jars of buttons and ribbons and bag making notions.
I'm very lucky that the garage was built away from the house though it's not advisable to traipse across the yard in the dead of night when the weather is vile, there's 4' of snow or wild animals about but, if we had attached the garage to the house as originally intended, my studio would have been the master bedroom and I'd probably have had to use a much smaller room for my sewing. I've created a central sewing area that could accommodate other people too but is currently full of patterns and works in progress; I'm not very tidy. The only thing missing is someone to share it with - I find I do a lot more work when there's someone else to chat to but I live in an area where a lot of quilters have their own spaces that range from closet size to a spare cabin in the woods and we just get together twice a month to show and tell or learn a new technique. As I said, I feel very lucky to have this dedicated space.

Oh how I love dreaming!! I am lucky I have a bedroom in the house for my sewing, piecing and cutting. Then I have a room in my DH's shop for my long arm and all the fabric I got from Iowa. But of course my dream room would be a sun room the whole length of the house that would fit everything in one place. I find I like working in the house as opposed to going over to the shop.

I've often wondered about how well an office/quilting room combination works. Fabric/textile creates lots of lint dust which is bad for computers. Any problems for those who have done this?

I'd like it to be 20 by 20, custom cutting and sewing surfaces and built in shelves enough room for my long arm and to work on all my projects.....

I don't really dream about sewing rooms anymore, because I like to keep my dreams realistic, and a couple of years ago I got the perfect room for me.

My husband did all the work, but since we added on, we just didn't use the old dining room for dining. It's 11' x 15', the long wall has an archway to 'his' room, the old living room. I have my machine and ironing center so that when I use them, I'm facing the tv. One 11' wall is covered with cupboards, all the way to the ceiling, plus there are other parts of other walls with cupboards/counters. One of the counters is desk height, and has a cable hookup if a computer is ever needed there. The floors are tile, the walls are dark blue. It has a door to close it off from the rest of the house, but the color hints at the formal room it used to be
Oh, right between my sewing room, and HIS room, there is an elliptical LOL I do use it.

For cupboards, we went to Lowe's and bought their oak unfinished kitchen cabinets. We even purchased a couple of drawer units, and he chopped off the toe kick, so I had drawers and after he built a platform for my foot pedal, the height is perfect for me too. We could have just used wall cabinets, but I really like having the drawers.

When the table's leaf is up, which it almost always is, it measures 67" x 49". He cut a hole, and built a shelf below the desktop. so the machine is dropped in and there's a level surface
The swinging door sits between the sewing room and the kitchen. Our house was built in 1918, and the swing door is original, I wanted to keep it.

Many years ago, this was the kids toy room. When we were doing the remodeling, we found some little kid dawings and notes, that are now tucked away in the waaay upper cabinets, with a note from me as to what they are. 'Treasures' for whoever finds them when I am gone!

joyce888 Add a LAQM and this one would suit me just fine,I have enough other macchines and etc to finish it off.

I just moved into "the kids room" in February. It looks like the junky corner I moved out of. Hmmm....I need to re-evaluate my space. I want finished quilts - appliqued wall hangings - on the walls. This room has a low ceiling so I don't have alot of wall space for larger wall quilts. I keep thinking "as soon as I finish this project I will re-think this room" HA!

I'd build over our extra deep 2 car garage. Then there would be room for my sewing table, cutting table, books, fabric, TV cart, computer desk, and maybe even a long arm machine.

LOL!!!! You're a riot!

I'll be retiring in 1 1/2 years and my husband and I are moving to TN. We will be building a house there and will have the entire top floor as open space. My husband will have part of it as his office and all his computer stuff. We will have a sitting area with a TV and a small kitchenette with a refrigerator, sink, microwave and coffee pot. There will also be a bathroom up there. The rest of the space will be mine to do whatever I want with it. My biggest wish is to have plenty of space so my friends and fellow quilters can come anytime and quilt or just visit. I would like to start my own quilt guild so my friends could just hang out with me. I have worked so long and haven't had time to have guests in my home I'm looking forward to having people around me all the time.

Don't threaten my husband with this!!!!

Because he will build whatever dream room I want.

I am perfectly happy with my sewing room and the annex where the long-arm lives.

He is going to make a bookcase with a wide top for the annex. So I have a place to put my tools (pins, scissors, the cat) etc on while I quilt.

I'd pick out the best from each of your ideas. Then I'd add a comfy recliner in the sun so I could curl up for a nap when I got sleepy. I'd never have to leave. While we're dreaming, let's add a cook and house cleaner, too. LOL

Hey now! My little furry quilting buddies resent that remark! LOL

It would make it a little easier to fmq if there wasn't a kitty on the quilt though. LOL

Three of my machines are computerized, so it wouldn't seem that the lint resulting from sewing and quilting would have much effect on computers. Also, my computer sits on one end of my large sewing cabinet. I have never had a problem, but have allergies so I dust and clean my studio weekly. I think you would have to let a lot of dust and lint accumulate for it to become a problem.

I have a nice room for my sewing. It is about 13' x 13' I think, plus a really small walk in closet. It works for me, but I would love to have a bigger room. I desperately want a longarm, and that would just not work here at all.

My dream idea, or one of them actually would be to get a casita, or park model home that would sit out back of the house. I have a friend that has one of these as her vacation home and I visited her there once. All I could think of was how great it would be for a studio. When I got home I checked out a few here in town and wow, they were so nice. Some had lofts that would be perfect for storing the extra stuff we all seem to accumulate.

The reason I think a casita would be perfect is mostly the time thing. They can be brought in and set up in a day or two. No need for a cement foundation, or even extra property taxes. They are treated like a trailer basically. Or so I was told. you can get them that are plain or looking like a cabin. Even with a porch.

The only problem I can see is finding one with the space for a long arm. But I think they can be customized. I would use the bedroom to store all my fabric and supplies, and the living room for the machines and such. I could hang finished quilts from the loft wall. I wouldn't really need the kitchen area, but it would be nice.

http://www.parkmodelsdirect.com/PH/index.asp Lots of pictures.

For me at this point, it is just a dream. I could probably get more space if we built a big building on our property. But then I would have to share it with my husband and all his junk. Plus getting it built is a whole long process. We have looked into those steel buildings and they are great, but then you have to put down a cement slab and that would cost a lot. Then even if you have the people come and build it, you still have the finishing and all that. I am just too impatient for my own good.

It would be connected to my living room with french doors so that when I entertain I could close it off, but when I am just at home it would be open to the rest of the house. It would be about 20x20 and so would the living room be. It would have my serger and my sewing machine on an L shaped table, and the best embroidery machine available. I would send my quilting out to a LA. I would have design walls on swing hooks just like they display rugs at the store so I could work on a dozen or more at a time. I would have a cushioned rubberized flooring, soft yellow walls.

Similar to what everyone else has said but I'd need to add a cleaner ;) I hate that part!

joyce888,
I want your dream studio.

I asked my husband if we ever get rich could we put a little "tough shed" in the back and make it mine for quilting only and he said yes, so something to look forward to, I think it will be perfect with windows, shelving and cabinets.....sigh.....

My DH is building my dream sewing studio. It has been a work in progress for several months. It's 22 X 24 and will be absolutely wonderful once it is all done. Lots of wall space for quilts and a center cutting island on wheels that can be locked in place. It will have shelves and doors in it and also bookshelves on the ends. ( For all those quilting books)
The reason it is taking a while is he is also building a huge walkin closet for me and a very large bathroom. The walls are done and painted in the quilting room and closet and the airconditioning and heating is going in this weekend. All the trim work will come next. He is building the shelving and the closet stuff as the days go by. It will be great once it is done and I really can't wait to have a nice big bathroom. Just wish we could have had it when my girls were home.

hmmmmmmmmm the perfect quilting studio. that is a hard one. I get a small corner of the dining room right now so this is hard for me to decide on. But here I go I would have to say a room outside of the house that is connected. It would be probably around 30' by 40'. the room would be separated by a half wall a 30' by 10' section would be designated my kids play area (they are still real small) and the rest would be set up with lots of windows one every 6' which are flanked by large shelves for fabric and storage that are built in. these windows have window seats in them or table space for different things. on the far end would be a long arm set up with vertical storage for batting on rolls to hand from the walls. in the center of what is left in the room I would have a very large double cutting station/ table where I would have three sewing machines one for piecing one embroidery one and a kiddy one for the kids to play on. the shelves would be made of cherry wood with a mahogany stain. something kinda reddish brown dark color. the walls would be a couple of different colors. the kids area would be a mural on one wall and the other chalk board paint. I would have one 8' wall that would be a design wall and another one that would be half chalk board or white board and the other a peg board. I would have a desk in there with a computer for me to play on and a flat screen tv in there to watch. one for me and one in the kids area for them to watch movies on. I would probably paint the walls a creamy white color and use accents to add color. mostly because of the dark wood shelves. I would also have a rocking chair in there and a nice and comfortable over sized love seat in the kids area. I would have tons of pot lights every 3 feet that can be controlled almost in individual sections and I would have a couple of desk lamps and floor lamps and task lighting. I would also have a sink in there and a mini fridge for snacks and such for the kids. I would also have a perminate rod installed for drying fabric on that I have starched or hand washed. I would also have a corner for the ironing board that is 20"x45". the floor would be wood in my area and this vynal wood looking stuff in the kids area. I would also have rugs in there to help warm up the room. I would have plugs installed at two levels and two different outlets in every section. (if you haven't guessed I have given this a lot of thought already) but this is just the begining of my wish list. I would love the have enough fabric to fill the shelves 1/2 full (need room to add more hehe)