Session 3: Plan the Layout

Now that you've done your analysis and your visualization, the next step is to plan our layout. And the key to success in planning a perfect layout is to measure everything. Let me say that again, measure everything. Measure the room, measure the furniture that's going to be going into it and measure the large accessories, anything that will take up floor space. You need those in order to do your layout.

Now, Lois Hallock I showed you her book earlier, "Creating Your Perfect Quilting Space". She has an accessory studio planner that she's developed to go with it. It's just a little short brochure almost that you can purchase. But it is a worksheet for you and you can put your measurements down on this worksheet, like your sewing table, the width, the length, the height, all of the particular dimensions that you need, your room size. And what you're going to do is she has in this, she's done graph paper for you and she has already sized a lot of standard furniture that might go into a sewing room such as your ironing boards, your cutting tables, your bookcases, even a sofa or a guest bed.

Over here she has different sizes for selling furniture that are kind of standard. So this is a good place to start. It's all in one, it's all ready for you. But you don't necessarily have to go this route. I just wanted to show you this.

She does her specs at 1/2 an inch graph paper which we have here old school graph paper is 1/4 of an inch equals one foot, Lois decided to make it a little bit bigger so it's easier to see and work with. She went with 1/2 an inch equals one foot. So all of her furniture designs here are scaled to that 1/2 inch. You have a couple of options, you can go old school. And I wanna show you how this works.

I went ahead you need a ruler, you're gonna need scissors, a pen and some tape. And the first thing you wanna do is draw out your room. And I like to use plastic quilting rulers, you don't have to, they come in different sizes. I just have this one here and it's handy. I like the plastic, the clear acrylic rather because I can see through and see exactly where the 1/4 inch lines are and line everything up and cut it.

It's just nice for getting that layout perfectly but you can use a regular school ruler if you wish. When you do your layout, you want to do the outer boundaries of your room, you wanna put in the door. This is a symbol that all designers use, interior designers use or architects, this is the symbol for a door. And basically, most standard doors are 30 inches or 36 inches depending, but you need to measure your door, believe it or not and see how wide it is. So you leave the width of the opening and then you're going to come back this way because that's how far the door swings.

You need to know how far is that door swinging open because you can't really use the space behind here unless it's maybe for design wall or some kind of storage. But you can't put let's say a bookcase there. So that's important to know. You also need to know how far into the room is it coming so that you aren't bumping into things as you open the door. You're also gonna wanna put in your windows, the double line here is a standard symbol for a window, measure them and put that in.

And you may even wanna put in the height of the window so you know if you're going to be covering the window with your furniture. You may have a long window that goes almost to the floor or they may be short windows. It's good to know what your height is. You may have a closet in the room, I didn't draw a closet in this one. But if you do you need to take that floor space out so that you aren't planning on putting anything there but you'll also know how big the closet is for storing things.

Afterwards, I usually now I drew this to the 1/2 inch equals one foot. And I would also write that on your plan especially if you're sharing it with anybody. If you have to do any construction or anything they need to know this scale. Typically, I have worked at 1/4 inch, but I went ahead and did this at 1/2 inch 'cause I just cheated and I cut out Lois's designs here, her little furniture. You can do the same thing on graph paper and I have done that many times.

I think I counted up the other day I had 10 Air Force moves. And usually before we would move, I would do this for my layout with the next house, so we would know exactly where to put the furniture when the movers came because they would only place it once, and my husband didn't wanna have to keep moving furniture around. So I would usually go in and do a quick layout. I guess with my background, that's just what I do. So once you have your little pieces cut out, and I just picked a few of them here.

Let's say we wanna put our sewing table by the window, we wanna have our ironing station nearby. Okay, I've got a bookcase there for my fabrics. So let's put my kitchen table there. And oh, here's for my books. And oh, don't forget all important, you wanna cut out a chair and you're going to put that in.

Well, why is that important? It's important because there is a three foot rule. This is a critical rule in all design, kitchen designers, interior designers, everybody uses it. The three foot rule is what you want to be able to walk through, you need three feet to comfortably walk around any furnishings without having to crunch and do the tippy toe side to side that we all have had to do in the past. If this is my perfect space, let's get it right so I can move freely.

three foot rule. I also wanna be able to see how much room for instance, if I have my cutting table in close, do I have enough room to back that chair up so that I can get around. And remember, you're looking at 1 1/2 inch that's two blocks is only one foot. So I can't just put this here and say that looks nice. I don't have enough room for my chair.

That's why this is good. So I've looked at this but then I realize well, there's not enough room to really get around here. And you know what, it might be nice to have my cutting table over by the window. Let's do that, let's put it by the window. And let's move this over here.

Oh yes, I think I like that better. I thought I would have loved to have had it near the window but now I'm thinking this way. Oh no, the ironing boards way too far. Let's put it here. Let's put my fabrics here so that it's near my kitchen table.

And then I'm gonna put my books here. So play with it. It just makes it easy. And that's the joy of old school is I can do this. Once I get it set, make a little tape roll and put it under here and put your piece down.

Now, when somebody comes into the room or picks it up when you're not there and says oh, what's she working on? Your pieces won't fall off. And with a little tape roll, you can still pull them off and move them around. You can also take this once you get it done to the copy machine and make copies out of it. Or if you're really sure you want it in place and nobody's gonna change your mind well, you can come in and go ahead and tape it down that way.

It's your layout, do it as you wish but these are the tips that I found over the years that work extremely well, all right? So that's the old school method. I like the old school because I can adjust. But there is the modern method, and that's called Computer Aided Design. Over the years, I've had everything from having to sew on a dining room table and put things away, that was my method for years.

When I first went in the Air Force I sewed in my dorm room, I've sewed in hotel rooms. In one place that we lived there was a long, narrow closet area, kind of a storage area, I think it was about maybe seven feet wide. but it was very long, that became my sewing area. It's taken a while before I really got the studio. That wasn't until I had a really nice sewing room and house that we designed and built.

And then when I started long arming, I moved down to the basement and created a studio there. So it's been a while before I've had close to my dream studio. And so this house that we just moved into we had the unfinished basement. And it's going, it was going to be a shared space, I didn't get the whole basement. So we have a kitchen area over in here, a bar area.

And my older son, who's an engineer is very proficient at CAD. And he did all of this on the computer for me. And this was his first rendition 'cause we were gonna have an exercise room and my husband's got a reloading room, we wanted a bathroom. And this is a versatile because in the future it could always be a bedroom and you wanted the bathroom there. And then this was gonna be family area.

Well, Chris's first version was it had to have the ping pong table. The heck with all that, but the reason I'm showing you this is because I need to marry my space with the rest of the area. That's one of my limitations. So I don't want it when people come down to use the basement, that they're seeing a horrible looking work area. How can I marry it?

So I told Chris what my needs were, we measured all of my furniture. And this was the first rendition, this was going to be all of my sewing machines, I've got a large one that I use that's a straight stitch machine that I use a lot for putting the quilts onto the leaders and for binding and even for quilting. I've got my janome that's my multipurpose machine. I've got a serger that I use extensively in the business. At one point in time, I had a six thread embroidery but that has since left the building should we say.

I have a long arm that I had to get in here and my large cutting table. Well, this was the first rendition because it's okay. But Chris forgot a couple things. So let's go look at the next rendition. So I had to tell him and we had to go back to the computer.

So then we moved it around. And this light blue that you're seeing here is the three foot rule. And I told him just go ahead and put that right in there as part of the CAD so we can move it as a whole and not have to worry about it. And that's why he shaded it. So you can see coming down the stairs we wanted to make sure there's plenty of room with the door and everything else.

So this was another rendition and now I'm getting a little more space. I got to move over here. Dad Nick said he didn't like that idea. Okay, back to the drawing board. When we went back to the drawing board this time, I said Chris you did a good job, you did a really good job.

However, there's more things we need to include. I need a place for my books, I've got a large credenza that carries all my books. And also we need to include my fabric storage, I've got quite a few wire shelves that hold my fabric. So this time he put in my wire shelves, he was using the credenza over here. And we moved the cutting table.

Now this little dot represents a post and my other son is a contractor. So he and Chris were working in concert on this because they were going to build it together along with my husband. So we have this awful post here and a post here that we had to consider. Now we've moved my two sewing tables over here with the serger over here. And then this is a baker's rack that I have for my long arm supplies and books and he put it in there.

He's getting closer, it's still not quite right. Dad said no ping pong table this time, he wanted to make it into more of a family room. And I also wanted space for when clients came over. We were putting my design wall here. And I usually hang their quilts up when they're finished and do the grand reveal.

And then also I can sit down with clients if we need to look at books and things. So this is evolving. And even the door placement in placements in this room are changing. So there's a lot going on. Next revision, which is close to the final one.

This was the final one we went with. Moved my tables closer and because they're closer I've been able to eliminate all those chairs, that just wasn't practical. So I just said let's get rid of some chairs but Chris put it in just to show that we had the space. We decided to put the long arm here, my baker's rack moved over and now you can see that we do indeed have an ironing board included. So this is what you can do with a layout and you can visually see that you're going to have enough space, that everything is going to fit and it really helps you plan what you're going to do.

While you're working on your layout, the first thing I want you to do is nail down the layout before you do anything else. The other consideration besides the three foot rule is the work triangle. Just like we have a work triangle in kitchens that's between the refrigerator, the stove and the sink, you want to have a good work triangle. And that's between your cutting board or your cutting area, your sewing area and your ironing board. My work triangle is extremely huge but it really couldn't be helped because of the limitation I had.

The better one is that it's fairly close for me here. I don't mind walking that much. And usually when I'm at my cutting table, I'm there for quite a while and then I transport things over. And it's not as big a deal. But if you can, I mean ideally, I would have preferred to have moved my long arm down and put my cutting table right here so that I had a smaller triangle.

That would have been ideal. The space didn't allow it, it just didn't work. But it's something to keep in mind while you're doing your layout. Once you have the layout nailed down and you say, I really think this is what I want, I want you to sit down in your quiet space, preferably in the studio, and literally walk through it, look at it, really make sure it's what you want. Once it's good, especially if you're doing new space, I want you to consider the electrical.

Where do you need the outlets? I've got to have an outlet for my serger. I've got to have an outlet for this sewing machine. I need an outlet here. I definitely need consideration with my iron.

Now there are building codes and building codes typically are every six feet you need an electrical outlet. But you may have special needs, you may need to look at for instance, I have a steam generator iron so I wanted a separate circuit because of in my last studio, I was always blowing the circuit breaker and having to go out in the garage to reset it when I used the particular iron. I didn't wanna go through that. So I had the electrician put in a higher amperage circuit that was dedicated to the iron. And then I had him put another one here because sometimes I will move my ironing board over and I iron right here by the table so I can put the weight of the quilt onto the table.

And it works wonderfully well or when I'm ironing large amounts of yardage especially when I'm doing draperies, I can throw that onto the table and have my iron here. So I had a double circuit put in there that took care of that. I also over here have a TV on this wall. Yes, I like to have my TV in there when I'm working or if I want to watch a video or whatever. So I made sure he put in a wall chase because it's a wall mounted TV, I could run the cords down to the electrical, that's something else you might wanna consider if you're having any wall mounted TVs.

I also had to consider if I wanted a sound system in there. Did I want any speakers in the room, we were obviously having some in the family area, it wasn't that much more expensive to just throw a couple back here for my section. So that's something you may want to look at. Also with the TV, do you need any special electrical considerations for cable? Do you need anything special for your computer?

I got my computer over here, this actually changed and I'll show it to you in a minute. The electrician put in a dedicated circuit for my computer and that will help minimize power surges and it's a good thing to do and you may even wanna consider it for your sewing machines that are computerized. So those are all considerations with electrical. The outlets, the more the better. You never know how you're gonna rearrange things.

So if you need to put in a couple extra, do so they're very inexpensive in the long term scheme of things. You also don't wanna overload the circuits or the wall switches and you don't wanna be using a lot of extension cords or power strips. They're easy but you don't wanna overload. It's not safe. It just isn't safe so don't do it.

Just give yourself the extras that you need. In this post here, I actually had the boys put in an outlet for me up high because a lot of times when I'm working on this table especially with clients, I have a laptop that I use to write up their work orders and I can plug it right in along with a portable printer. So that was something special that I wanted. Those are the kinds of things, sit down with your plan. Where is my electrical?

What do I want? How about my light switches? How many different lights am I gonna have? Where do I want my switches? Are they easy for in and out for turning on and off?

Sometimes you want one if you go in a room for instance, we turn on for the main area here but I've got another one down here in case somebody ever uses this as a bedroom. After you have been in here, you can just go to your bedroom and turn the switch off on this wall rather than having to turn it here, walk down the hall in the dark and then get to your next light switch. Same thing in your sewing area, there may be several that you want to have the double switch on. So look at your lighting. Speaking of lighting, you need to be able to see what you're doing.

You cannot have enough lighting, I can't stress this enough. And the older you get, the more lighting you need. So overhead lighting is considered ambience lighting. It just kind of general lighting, it's not good enough to see what you're doing and that's where you need task lighting. Your ambience lighting you go as bright as possible.

Don't skimp, put in plenty if you're going from scratch. You can always put the lighting on dimmers. You can use cans for your lighting. I've got a lot of cam lighting in mind, you can bring it down with pendants, you can use track lighting. I've got a track light here.

And you'll see all this when I show you my studio pictures for the design wall. The task lighting is for up close. So I like the art lights, they come in stand lights or table lights. I've got one by each of my sewing machines, they're very bright, they use the natural daylight. So anywhere you're gonna have tasks where you're working up close, you wanna have that kind of lighting with a chair and a table.

For hand sewing, you're definitely gonna want a light next to it for hand sewing. So those are all things that you need to consider. That is the next step for your floor plan, you put in your lighting plan. The lighting is a little symbol like this is what professional designers use, you can just indicate it with a dot for that matter. But my son went and did some research on the lighting that we were looking at and found how far it's spread out, what was the arc of the lighting.

And then he drew these circles so we could really see what the overlap was going to be and get a good feel for the lights. Sadly, when the electrician came in, he said ZJ I don't think you need all those lights. And that was the one thing I really, really wanted and my husband picked up on it as a way to save money, I should have put my foot down. You'll see in the pictures instead of this double row of lights that I really wanted especially where my long arm and cutting table are, there's just one row of lights. I was still hesitant.

Mark said I've been doing this for 30 years. I'm telling you this is gonna work. I said and I've been sewing and quilting for about that long and I'm not sure it is. He said I tell you what? He said I will put this in as a single line but I've also got it set up so we can easily come in if we need to and throw a track in there for you.

And we may actually be doing that because I'm finding it's just not quite bright enough for me. But this is how you do lighting. So the bottom line is visualize, visualize, visualize. Don't rush your floor plan, make it work. And when you get it together, then we can start building, we can start the construction or we can start moving around.

Even if you have a space that's already in place, things can be added just like my electrician can come back and add lights for me. That is something you can consider in your current space and perhaps you just need to add some extra lights or extra outlets to really get the perfect space for you.