Quilting space
 

We are in the process of quilting one of the quilts we are making for my aunts. Here is a picture of our tiny front room and what we are using for a sewing table.
http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o...ltingspace.jpg

My wifes sitting at the 201-2, behind it is a Singer 66 treadle, and a Franklin treadle in a parlor cabinet.
To the left of the Franklin is a Singer 66 E machine in it's cabinet and right in front of that is a Kenmore 158-523 in a cabinet.

This picture kind of shows just how tiny our front room is. And the sad part is the house is equally tiny.

Joe

One the questions I am frequently asked is, "Where do you keep all of your machines in a condo"? My answer is "everywhere!!!!!"

And I thougt our dungeon where sewing room is was crowded. You got me beat Joe, but can't decide what machines to give up although I only have two that are in cabinets, rest are on shelves. I interchange them mostly on a Bueatyfold sewing table that husband has made me different styles of machine holders for. My dear old Janome sits on a very old, solid table at all times. I like OLD! Sorry, three are in cabinets, forgot the featherweight cabinet holding a featherweight.
Singer treadle, Kenmore in cabinet.

Your front room looks perfect! I guess there is always stacking vertically :)

That's pretty clever, mcGuyver!

question: so, do you buy, repair and resell or just "collect". I have several "collections", but fortunately for my family, the pieces are small and containable...or at least usable....

Geri,

Haven't sold any yet, but have some that I'm going to as soon as I've finished with them. Gave one away a week or so ago.
Some I will keep. Wife and / or I like them for what ever reasons so those we'll keep. The rest, well some will go, and some we don't know.

Joe

That's what we are doing in the garage.

Joe and Elaine

Like the rest of us that are in realtive small spaces, we make do the best wwe can & and use space to the max. I think it is much easier then dining room table.

Goes to show, we quilters get the job done no matter how small our space is.....

I did the same thing when I quilted a t-shirt quilt for my DDIL, put another cabinet behind the one my Singer 66 was in, to help support the quilt while I was sewing. a wooden tv-tray on my left helped also. My sewing room at the time was very tiny also.

I keep moving my machines & tables around. I think the secret is to not be locked into a set arrangement. That's especially true for those of us with multiple machines we like to use.

I was standing in the front room ......... 'er sewing machine room, talking to my wife when I got the thought that a large backwards "L" shaped table with the machine set up on the vertical part with the bottom to their left, would be almost perfect.
I was thinking of a couple 4'x8' pieces of 1' finish grade plywood sanded, filled, stained a dark walnut / mahogany then shellacked and polished smooth would be a great sewing table. Personally I never have enough room and the material I'm using always seems to fall off the table and drag itself to the floor or twist or cause trouble.
IF I live long enough and get a bigger house with a sewing area, I'm going to build one like that.

Joe

LOL! You are certainly putting your machines to a good, even if it wasn't necessarily the way they were intended! Ingenious, for sure, and it works!

I understand your situation. We have a small frame house and turned our front room (actually living room AND dining room) into our sewing room back in the Fall of 2010. We lovingly call it the “Sweat Shop”. At last, we finally had a living room that we actually live in! I call it a sewing room with a parlor and snack nook. Recliners and TV in the parlor, dining table and chairs in the snack nook. Everything else is sewing machines. It’s only 334 square feet in size, so it’s not very big. All of the other rooms in the house (except one bathroom) store fabric, supplies, and “other” sewing machines in our collection. Our entire house is our “sewing area”, including the front and back yards where I do a lot of my at home sewing.

In the Sweat Shop, we set up a “U” shaped work area (I call it the wife’s “Command Center”) using a 2.5 x 8 ft folding table against a wall on one side, a Singer 430 combo cabinet (43” x 37” surface area) perpendicular to one end of the table, a 2 x 1.5 ft storage cabinet perpendicular to the end of the 430 cabinet, and a Singer economy cabinet with extension leaf extended finishing out the U shape. It provides enough room for most projects, access to several sewing/serger/embroidery machines, but the large surface area is hard to keep cleared off. All of that space gets filled up fairly fast, but it can be “reclaimed” when needed. I tell my wife that we don’t walk around our house, we dance around it. With so many sewing machines and cabinets in the house, we “dance around” them to get where we’re going, and should we both be going somewhere at the same time, we usually have to “dance around” each other AND the sewing machines!

Lucky for us, we’ve always enjoyed dancing together....

CD in Oklahoma

CD,

That really sounds like us too. Not only the sewing areas, but everywhere else in this tiny house. I guess I don't feel so bad now.

Joe