My New Quilt Closet

I'm not sure what took me so long to get a proper quilt storage solution for my sewing room, but after 10 years in this house, it has finally happened - I have a quilt closet!

My Previous Storage

I have a slightly awkward corner in my sewing room, between the murphy bed on one wall, and the cubby shelf that holds all my fabric, patterns, and various materials on the other wall. When I first thought about doing something there, I needed some extra organization for WIPs and such, so I bought this Ikea wire drawer unit with a shelf top. I loved the wire drawers because I could see what was in the drawers, and a little airflow is never a bad idea around fabric. And I was able to store my finished quilts on top of it. 

Actually, that's probably why it took me this long, because when I first got that drawer unit, I didn't have nearly as many sample quilts to store as I do now.

As time went on, the pile of quilts grew, and grew, until I started to nickname it the Leaning Tower of Quilts - or as my son called it (much better I thought) the Leaning Tower Of Pieces. It was becoming difficult to get a quilt from the pile without having to take all of them down, because there was so much weight there now that I couldn't just pull one out from the bottom of them stack, the whole stack would collapse on me.

So I was trying to come up with a better idea, and after another tower collapse and me resolving to finally fix the issue, Shannon Fraser showed her new quilt cabinet in her newsletter and I thought "why did I not think of this?" :-)  So I grabbed my tape measure, and it turned out that there is just enough space for a 1.5 door wide PAX wardrobe. (And the "why did I not think of this?" - because our entire house has no built-in closets because we prefer wardrobes and every room has a PAX wardrobe but somehow it didn't occur to me for the quilts).

Shannon's email came a few months ago, and I got busy with other things, but two weeks ago I finally took the pickup truck and my son (for extra muscle) to Ikea and we picked up a new wardrobe for my sewing room. After a small issue with buying the wrong set of hinges, the doors are finally on and I can show you what it looks like now!

Quilt Organization

Now that I have shelves, I can store the quilts in smaller stacks. This makes it easy to grab one without having to dismantle the entire stack (and risk an avalanche).

As a bonus, or maybe this is the main point here, I can also organize my quilts better. I have stacks for quilts that are part of a series like the Bar Quilts, or my Improv samples. There's a stack for all my Scrappy Love samples and another for the rainbow quilts. Some of these categories overlap (one of my Bar Code quilts is a rainbow quilt) but they are easier to see and when I pack for a trunk show, I know exactly what's where.

Works In Progress

I mainly wanted shelves so I could store the quilts, but I also included two drawers for smaller things like test blocks, WIPs, and fabric pulls I got ready for an upcoming project. 

The top drawer holds quilt tops that are ready to be quilted, a cute tea tin full of markers for my dry erase calendar, and fabric pulls for a couple of projects.

The bottom drawer has all my test blocks (and buntings), and finished projects from Quilt The North and collaborations like SewPink.

Because of where the door hinges go on the wardrobe, I wasn't able to put the drawers all the way to the bottom, so I got a wire basket to slide in the bottom to use that space as well (a trick I discovered with our bedroom wardrobes). It now holds some various random things like canvas bags, embroidery hoops, and practice sandwiches.

One tiny issue

I love the new quilt closet, but there is one tiny issue I didn't consider when putting it in place. The previous wire drawer unit didn't fill the entire space. There was room between the murphy bed and the drawer unit, and I stored my roll of batting in that nook. Then the two pieces of my design wall slid over the space, butted up against the wire drawers and were flush with the other end of the bed (a lucky coincidence at the time).

Well, I do have a solution in mind for the roll of batting, but I didn't consider that now the design wall overhangs the other end of the murphy bed, almost into the doorway. So I think I'll have to cut down that piece of insulation board and rewrap it to make it fit the bed still.

The current view from the door feels a little cramped ;-)