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If you work in the drapery, soft furnishings, and/or upholstery trade, chances are you know of Ceil DiGuglielmo. In addition to running her own homebased drapery and soft furnishings business, Sew Much More Custom Sewing in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, Ceil supports and assists workroom technicians through multiple avenues: The popular Sew Much More podcast featuring personal interviews with tradespeople, Sew Much More: 30 Minutes with Workroom Tech, an on-air collaboration with Susan Woodcock that offers an array workroom tips and advice; the Sew Much More Opportunity Thinking Series of podcasts highlighting personal innovations that make work life easier for us all; the Curtains and Soft Furnishings Resource Library (CSFRL), a multi-media clearing house for trade related information and educational materials, and the Drapery and Digital Design Digest, an on-line magazine catering to home décor professionals and enthusiasts.
One day in August, I was in my workroom prepping my machine. As I adjusted my lamp to thread the needle, Ceil DiGuglielmo began her fifth anniversary podcast. She talked about being astounded by the opportunities the podcast has brought her, about fear being her constant companion, and about learning to ask for help... Read the full article on the National Upholstery Association blog.
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UK-based Master upholsterer, Robbie Richardson reaches out to trades people and lay people alike through his popular podcast In Stitches and will soon expand that reach with the launch of Stuff Stitch Magazine, the first comprehensive upholstery trade magazine to exist in almost two decades. For Richardson, “telling the story of what lies beneath the covers” is not just a clever tagline, it’s a mission. “It’s about the detail under the covers (of a piece of furniture). It’s also about the story we never tell because there is no outlet to tell the story of upholstery.”
Continue reading on the National Upholstery Association website. I know I was not alone, 15 or 16 months ago, wondering if the emerging pandemic meant “curtains” for my fledgling upholstery and furnishings business. Workshops around the world scrambled to adjust to the health threat posed by interpersonal contact and the consequent restrictions that soon followed. Upholsterers reached out to one another on forums like the Professional Upholsterer’s Network (PUN) and during NUA Community Meetings to share information about Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and other such loans and grants. We all buckled down, adjusted our work spaces and protocols, continued to work hard, and hoped for the best...
Continue reading on the National Upholstery Association website. Who Made My Furniture?
4/23/2021
My Evolving Perspective I have always been a proponent of re-use. As a little girl, I treasured dolls and other toys passed on to me by my grandma. For my high-school homecoming dance, I wore a lace suit that belonged to my mom and, for prom, I rented a tuxedo rather than buy a dress. Much of my current wardrobe is second hand and my home is furnished, almost entirely, with pieces that were my parents’ or were purchased from antique and resale stores. Some of these pieces are hundreds of years old and all are still up to the task of providing comfort and support. I’d like to say that I routinely re-use for altruistic reasons, but that’s not really true. While I deeply appreciate the benefits to the environment of rescuing, repurposing and reusing, the truth is that my primary driver is simply that I love old stuff. I find old things beautiful to the eye and to the touch and I am hopelessly enamored of their intrigue, history and mystery.
Days of late, though, I’ve been giving more thought to the larger picture... Continue reading on the National Upholstery Association website. 70% -80% of what the furniture industry produces goes to landfills.*
It’s 1996 and 29-year-old Kriss Kokoefer is laying wide awake on the floor of a friend’s San Francisco apartment, her three modest suitcases stacked in the corner and her mind churning. Already, she has shed the skin of her past life in Cincinnati, OH - the round-the-clock demands of the hospitality industry that hadn’t fed her soul. Kriss has enrolled in an interior design school and thinks she is going to become a residential interior designer, but she is wrong... Continue reading on the National Upholstery Association website. |
AuthorMonica Rhodes has had the privilege to write several pieces for the National Upholstery Association at: Archives
December 2021
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