Doors were removed from the room’s former closet, far right, so that a custom shelving unit could be installed inside the space. The new shelves sit upon the base of a china cabinet, which was painted to match. A dining room table was repurposed into use as a cutting table in front of the window. Woven baskets and wooden boxes fill the closet unit and the freestanding shelving, at left, to organize and hide clutter.
Vickie Mason made the Irish chain quilt suspended above her sewing table.
A decorative basket and bird in Vickie Mason’s sewing room.
Drawers of the former china cabinet base, now the bottom of a built-in storage unit, hold thread, scissors and other sewing notions.For six years, Vickie Mason used a small guest bedroom in her Ringgold, Ga., home as her sewing room. But with the only storage space being a closet with one hanging rod, the avid quilter and seamstress says growing piles of fabrics, patterns and other sewing notions began to turn her work area into “a stacked mess.”
So she led interior decorator Margie Burgin into the room and commissioned a makeover.
“This looks like a mess,” Mason told her friend. “I want organization. I want a cute place to sew.”
When not working at NHC Healthcare in Fort Oglethorpe, where she is a physical therapist, Mason spends anywhere from four to 12 hours a week sewing or quilting. She began sewing in junior high school and has been quilting for 15 years.
“I made all my own clothes, made all my children’s clothes until they reached the age they didn’t want to wear clothes their mom made anymore. Then I started quilting, but I’ve started making clothes for girls again since my grandchildren were born,” she says.