Quilt + Creative Loft Organization
What a fun project. My client had recently built this space to be her quilting and creative loft. She has every imaginable type of craft: quilts, beading, buttons, chalk paint, buttons, upholstery and many more.
Her main goal was to unpack, organize, cull and sort her many boxes of fabric into a rainbow of colors. Her other goal was to make a functional space where she felt focused on her projects - not on all that she needed to organize. She felt overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the unpacking, and did not know where to start. Her creativity was suffering because she felt paralyzed by all of the stuff around her.
We started with the boxes and made that the critical focus, 37 boxes in all. It was so fun to see a historical look into her collection of fabric. She was able to set aside a lot of fabric to send to the Navajo Quilt Project, an awesome organization.
Once we had the fabric sorted into laundry baskets, we worked on building the shelving. Clear plastic or visible bins were important to have, so that she could easily see what color and fabric were in the bins. We pillaged many a Target to get as many of their Brightroom Bins as possible.
After the fabric was in a good place, we worked on reconfiguring the room. This included getting rid of some furniture, moving her main sewing table to the back window (better view!) and getting rid of as much as possible. We made 2 carload trips to their local Goodwill, and filled up a lot of the trash with excess packaging.
Creative projects have more accessories than you can even imagine. We spent a lot of great time sorting buttons, beads, scissors, needles and every conceivable tool. We created a ‘notions’ rollable cart, so that she could bring critical tools with her around the room.
We also created a couple of different dedicated zones:
Projects-in-Progress - clear boxes that had all the pieces of projects that were nearly finished, or in-progress.
Gifting and Wrapping Station - bows, boxes, ribbons, wrapping paper and gifts to make it easy to grab things, wrap them and go.
Stationary Station - organized all stationary into occasion and card type (blank, birthday, etc.).
Memory Central - dedicated archival boxes to hold pictures, momentos, etc.
Homework Assignments - items that the client could handle at night. This was usually items she wanted to mail to other people, or go through in greater detail (jewelry, pictures, etc.).
There was a little left to do before we had to catch our flight back to Colorado. We’re still awaiting final photos from the client, and have been checking in with them on homework assignments in order to finish. She has commented that it has felt like a much more peaceful space, and she’s been able to make a lot more creative projects with recent projects.
Total Organizing Time: 42 Hours
Product Budget: $1,500
