Craft Rooms We Love

A blog by Susan Christian

Last week, I received a request from a friend who works with Avalon Housing in Ann Arbor to supply face masks for their staff and sick residents. Unfortunately, I had none personally and Meadowlark had already depleted what little surplus they had for our field crew. Since I couldn’t do anything at the time, I put the request aside and didn’t think about it for a few days. But as the coronavirus situation evolved – I saw more and more posts online for instructions on how to make masks and realized it was time to pull out the sewing machine.

Digging into the back of a bedroom closet, I got the sewing machine and all the associated accoutrement (ironing board, cutting board, scissors, pins, rulers, etc.) and set up shop on my kitchen island to start sewing face masks. I dove right in and proceeded to completely overtake my kitchen/dining area with scraps, cords and sewing stuff. At some point I had to stop and make dinner, so I pushed aside the stuff as best I could and prepped dinner with the sewing machine as one of my “kitchen appliances.”

Looking at the mess later that evening, it all reminded me of the craft rooms Meadowlark has designed and built over the past couple of years. I started dreaming about what it would be like to have a designated space where everything was already set up and organized so that no “digging” was required every time I wanted to start a project. Or perhaps that my dinner prep wouldn’t include picking loose threads out of my salad makings. Think of the possibilities…think of the face masks I could produce!

We’ve done some great craft rooms at Meadowlark so I thought I would share:

For this quilt-making client we set up her craft room in a beautiful lower level space that even has a design board that doubles as a Murphy bed!

For their daughter who loved to paint, we set up this area to accommodate all of her painting supplies in a recent basement remodel for one of our repeat clients.

For this client who loves many different types of crafts, we designed this basement craft room to provide multiple work stations (because serious crafters usually have more than one project going at a time!), and also lots of storage.

Are you dreaming of a craft room? We’d love to start the conversation.