Quilt Storage

After more than 2 decades of making quilts, I have amassed quite a closet gallery. Actually, it outgrew the closet many years ago and expanded into a former bedroom that also happened to be my photography room. Occasionally it served as a guest room, but there was always the hazard of pins that had fallen into the carpet. Now, with my new studio, my goal was to consolidate all my quilts into one of the storage areas under the eaves. I thought about a storage system for a long time and finally came up with the idea of making rolling racks that would slide in and out of the closet area. The challenge was to make sure that the rack would fit through the elf door. And it also had to accommodate the sloping ceiling. I needed to make two racks: one to hold quilts narrower than 4 feet, and one for the wider quilts. I store my quilts rolled onto pipe insulation and inside a custom made bag. The majority of quilts are in the less than 4 feet wide category, so this needed to be the larger rack. Larger in the sense that it had more shelves.

So here it is - 4 feet long, 2 feet wide and 3 feet high. Masonite boards cut to fit make the base of each shelf. Each shelf has 3 cross bars, which you can sort of see where the T-joints are.

Here it is loaded up with quilts. See how nicely it fits through the door? From the masonite that was left over, my husband cut 6" tall pieces. These help prevent the quilts from rolling off the edges.

The other rack is 6' long and also has 3 cross bars on each shelf, but it only has 2 shelves. It's narrower and lower because it has to fit in the closet where the ceiling is lower to the floor. The shelves on this longer one sag a bit. I couldn't figure out how to make a truss to support the pvc. 

I should make some sort of chart where I can note the location of each quilt. All the bags are labeled with the title of the quilt, but rifling through all those bag ends is tedious. But really, I need a chart that tells me where I've put everything in the studio. I tried to be logical and store things according to how often I use them and also put them close to similar items, but I'm still opening and closing lots of drawers and boxes. Eventually I will remember where everything is. I hope.