Reloved Upholstery Footstool Course

This year I’ve really been trying to expand on my skills so I decided to sign up for the Reloved Upholstery footstool course in Manchester! I had my popular ‘Organic Origin’ design printed onto luxurious velvet with Fashion Formula, which I tool with me to use on the footstool.

The first day was a really fab day & a huge thank you to the course leader Simion for being so chilled & patient. It’s fun to make things & I got to work with my own fabric design too!

The second day was another fun one as I’d really missed being properly hands-on as the most I do these days is draw, paint & design prints / patterns on my computer software. It had been good to use tools! But I did find out rather quickly that I don’t get along with magnetic hammers! It was also nice to get back onto a sewing machine again.

I can’t believe I made the footstool with my own two hands as I usually create the fabric designs & that tends to be my job complete! It was so lovely working with one of my own prints & it definitely wouldn’t look like this without Simion’s expert help & patience.

There are 8 colourful plain velvet buttons: some lime, some dark green & some orange just to quirk it up a bit. I was also taught how to make my own fabric buttons & that was my favourite bit! Hats off to all you furniture makers / upholsterers & upcylers out there as it’s such hard going. I’m definitely better at the drawing & surface pattern design but I did my best & it’s always great to meet new people & learn new skills.

After the workshop I headed back to Manchester to finish off some sewing on my footstool / ottoman before I took it home for good. I was a bit slow during the class creating it but when you are working with your own fabric design your always going to be extra fussy!

If anyone has an interest in learning about upholstery then I highly recommend Simion’s classes! I also to give a shout out to Fashion Formula too for printing my ‘Organic Origin’ design so well. It’s nice when you can recommend others! And it’s took me a long time to find the right people… Other creatives may prefer to keep their supplier info a secret, I’m the opposite & an over sharer. If someone is good then I think you should let other people know that they are good & support their business; half of my work has always came from people recommending me too! Simion has just launched a scatter cushion class, another ottoman class & a cube class so check out Reloved Upholstery for further info. Finally, if you want to learn more about surface pattern design & creating your own fabrics check out my sister company Make it in Design.

I hope you like my footstool / ottoman!