| Storage is always an issue for those who stitch, knit, crazy quilt,
“sane” quilt and just plain create. I am lucky enough to have an area
devoted to my creative musings, but as all crazy quilters come to
understand, our chosen artistic venue leads us to dabble in many other
areas. We collect not only fabrics, but buttons, lace, jewelry findings,
threads, beads, stamps, fibers and more. Storage for all these “necessities”
becomes quite an issue. The space, it seems, can never be large enough. I
thought I would share with you a storage and utilitarian idea that my
husband and I came up with for my sewing/media arts studio. It allows me to
have a large work surface area, as well as much needed additional
storage.
One of my main goals was to combine storage with utility. Thus, I needed
drawers. Don’t we all! I also needed a large area to lay out fabrics,
cut out patterns, paint and more. To accomplish the goal of more drawers,
two inexpensive chest-of-drawers (each having six drawers) were purchased.
This was great, but I didn’t want to take up more space in my sewing
room than I had to. So, we made a decision to put the chest of drawer units
back-to-back to take up less space and still be able to access all the
drawers easily. To help with space issues, we also decided the new unit
should be mobile to some degree; so it would be put on casters. To
accomplish this, heavy-duty casters were put on a foundation piece of wood
onto which the chest-of-drawers were put back-to-back on the outermost
edges. In other words, a space of about 20" was left between the
chest-of-drawers. This was done for a couple of reasons. I knew I wanted to
be able to pull a chair up to the table on at least one side and have my
knees comfortably fit underneath, and I wanted a larger work surface than the
depth of the two chest-of-drawers provided. A niche was cut out from the
foundation piece to accommodate the width of a chair; and the shelves that
were put in the open area between the chest-of-drawers did not go completely
from one end to the other to provide the needed “knee room” at one end.
Several pieces of wood were glued together and framed to make a larger piece
which serves as the top of the entire chest-of-drawer work table. The final
size of my table is 4.5' by 5.5'.
I have included a couple of pictures which I hope will help you better
understand the design of the table. I am really enjoying the extra storage
and the large lay out area it provides. It is also really nice to be able to
roll it to one side of the room to open up space as needed.
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