The average sewing machine is about 2 feet wide and stores easily. Some of the best quilters have sewn in semi cabs, RVs, hotel rooms, and smaller. That table you eat dinner at? That works too. Small spaces can work just as well for sewing as full studios.
The Dream
Would we all love a gorgeous sewing studio with all of the room? Absolutely! And even these can have solutions that can be used in smaller spaces.
The Reality
Personally, my sewing spaces have ranged from a couple feet to a decent-sized bedroom. And the funny part, I was just as productive in the few feet as the whole room.
Below are some photos of the space I had for the year I lived in my parents’ guest room. It consisted of a 4 foot folding table and a couple shelves of a bookcase. During the time I stayed there, I completed all of the Breeze pattern quilts, a memory quilt, several wholecloth baby quilts, and worked on many others.
Another small space I once occupied for sewing entailed a foldaway cart that sat behind my couch dividing my living and dining spaces in a small 1 bedroom apartment. This can be seen below, though please ignore the mess and poor photography.
So how do we find the space?
Set realistic expectations
Be honest with yourself about how much room you really need. You need a workspace that is large enough to hold a sewing machine with a little space around it and somewhere to hold your quilting stuff.
Be ok with taking things out and putting them away
You may not be able to keep everything you need ready at hand all of the time and that is ok. A space can be used for multiple uses, so it will likely be necessary to take things out and put them away as needed. Your workspace may also be a desk that houses a computer or a table where dinner is served. When I had a small workspace, I had to cut, prep, and sew on the same table. So I would try to do each step in waves for multiple projects, and then tuck things away when I wasn’t actively quilting.
Choose your furniture wisely
Use pieces with lots of storage. A pretty cabinet with doors that close, a cool wall shelving unit with cubbies, a drawer unit. Organization is key and storage furniture can contribute to the other purpose of the room as well as storing your fabric and notions. Ikea is a great source that a lot of quilters use. My work tables and notions cart both came from there, but they also have a ton of modular systems that work in any size space.
Keep your active project count low
Some of us, guilty party over here, have tons of projects active at any given time in various stages….I have a bunch of projects that need quilting, some that are ready to piece, some mid-cutting, and more. If space is a challenge, please do not be like me in this regard. Finishing the projects that you start and keeping very few works-in-progress around means you don’t have to find the space to put them.
Only purchase fabric and supplies as needed
You really don’t need that many things to be able to quilt. There are a lot of fancy things that can be nice to have, but the truth is a made a lot of quilts before I had them. Keep only the fabric and supplies that you will use and that will fit in your designated storage. Don’t become a fabric collector, a thread collector, a cute quilty gizmo collector.
De-stash regularly
Clear out the notions, rulers, and fabric you aren’t using and sell them through de-stashes on social media. I have gotten some fabric this way before. If you aren’t using rulers and tools regularly, they probably don’t work that well for you, so make space by getting rid of them. Same goes for fabric. If it has been sitting around and you just haven’t found the right project or it doesn’t quite fit your tastes anymore, clear it out and move on. Set the size of your storage furniture as the limit of how much you can have at any given time.
Use your resources
Libraries, churches, community centers, and similar places can be a good resource if you need to be able to spread out a quilt to sandwich and baste. The often have spots where you can find a corner of floor or push some large tables together. You also may have a friend with the space available in part of their home.
Quilting in small spaces is something that many quilters encounter at some point. Even the best quilters with lots of published patterns who seem to have it all together sometimes have small spaces.
Check out these posts from other well-known quilters for more their take on quilting in small spaces:
