It started with a Facebook friend I hadn’t seen in person for 50 years. She’s a fiber artist, and while we were trying to arrange a time to get together, she asked if I wanted to see her studio.

Her studio. That set my brain in motion. Hey, I want a studio, too.

Of course, I could rent studio space, but that could easily cost more than $1,000 a month. Besides, I wanted a studio at home. And I wanted to put a longarm machine in it.

There was one small detail. I didn’t own a longarm machine.

But why let that interfere with planning where I was going to put one?

I already had a sewing room of sorts—a spare 10′ × 12′ bedroom where my Bernina 335, fabric, supplies and assorted quilting paraphernalia had gradually taken up residence. The Bernina sat on a garage-sale sewing desk that wasn’t particularly comfortable, the lighting was terrible, and two collapsible tables took up a good portion of the room. A large closet held my fabric stash, so whatever I did, I still had to be able to get into it.

Clearly, this was going to require more than pushing furniture around. So I did what any perfectly reasonable person planning for a longarm she didn’t own would do: I opened Illustrator and made a to-scale floor plan.

Could I fit a 10-foot longarm frame along the 12-foot wall? Maybe, but it would be tight. Then I discovered that a 10-foot frame could be shortened to eight feet. I dropped an eight-foot frame into my floor plan and—amazingly—it fit. I could get around it, the doorway still worked, and I could still get to my fabric.

Now I just had to fit everything else.

The Bernina was staying, along with my computer printer and my beautiful Amish rocker/glider and ottoman. Was the rocker essential quilting equipment? No. Was it staying? Absolutely.

One collapsible table, the sewing desk, large ironing board and iron, TV table and TV were going. That left me needing compact places to sew, cut and press.

After a lot of searching, I found the perfect sewing cabinet: the Laverne & Shirley from Tiny Apple in Minnesota. It had a small pullout cutting table and ironing surface that would wrap around my sewing chair, plus an insert that would let my Bernina sit flush with the sewing surface.

Perfect—except it was out of stock until December.

Surely somebody else had one. I called every store in America I could find that carried it. All out of stock. I looked at other Arrow furniture, but nothing fit my little room nearly as well.

I guess I was waiting until December.

Then came the 26-inch mistake.

I had rented a longarm at Stitches and Stuff in Cincinnati, nearly a two-hour drive from Waverly. While I was there, I looked at the machine and thought, That sure looks wider than 26 inches.

So I measured it.

The machine itself was 26 inches wide. The frame it sat on was closer to 55 inches.

Oops.

My carefully plotted Illustrator floor plan had allowed less than half the space the longarm would actually need. Back to the drawing board—and goodbye to the second collapsible table.

What I needed instead was a shorter, wider cutting surface. I found it in the Dingo Cutting Table and Storage cabinet by Kangaroo. It was just the right size, offered plenty of storage and, according to my newly corrected floor plan, fit perfectly.

There was just one problem.

It was out of stock until October.

Well, I was already waiting until December for one piece of furniture. I might as well wait until October for another.

Apparently, turning a 10′ × 12′ bedroom into a quilting studio was going to require careful planning, creative use of space and patience.

A lot of patience.

And I hadn’t even tackled the lighting yet.

To be continued . . .