Chairs, Fabric & the Magic of Making Something with Your Hands with Nicole Crowder

Step into Nicole Crowder’s sold-out upholstery workshop, where old chairs, bold Crypton performance fabrics, and plenty of staple pulling come together. 

Nicole knows how to get people excited about an old chair. Excited enough to convince strangers in 13 cities across the US to spend three hours pulling staples, replacing padding, wrestling with fabric, and loving every single minute of it. 

If you didn’t know Nicole before, now you do. She’s a designer, creative director, upholstery artist, Cooper Hewitt exhibitor, and the woman behind an upholstery workshop tour that sold out almost immediately. Every single stop. 

Crypton came along for the ride by donating performance upholstery fabrics for the workshops, offering Nicole’s students a whole lot of options to experiment with while they learned, hands-on, the art of upholstery. 

And that’s why this partnership caught our attention. Nicole isn’t just showing people the finished chair. She’s teaching them the craft.  

Going beyond the finished chair, saying, “Look what I made.” She’s teaching people how upholstery works. They take the chair apart. They see what’s underneath. They learn why it takes forever. They make decisions about padding, patterns, texture, and color. And then they put the whole thing back together with their own hands. 

That’s a very different way to experience fabric than looking at a swatch online. It also makes the performance part feel a lot more relevant.  

If you’ve spent hours wrestling and rebuilding the thing piece by piece, you’re probably going to care about what goes back on it. Yes, you want fabric you love, but you also want to sit on the chair without treating it like museum property. 

Whether it’s vintage, inherited, thrifted, or just a piece you couldn’t bring yourself to get rid of, Crypton’s stain resistance and easy cleanability make a lot of sense once that chair goes back into real life. 

Q&A with Nicole Crowder

Okay Nicole, real talk. How does a photo editor become one of the most respected upholstery artists in the country? 

“I was really pulled towards the sense of a chair being dressed, putting on a personality or a character through fabric. Once that concept solidified in my brain, I became enamored with the whole process, the pace of it, its history, and the possibility of restoring pieces for longevity.” 

It started in 2012 at a little antique store called Ryan’s Relics just north of Baltimore. She walked in curious and walked out with a calling. 

Since then, her work has shown up on HBO’s Insecure and at the Cooper Hewitt’s 2025 Making Home Triennial, where she and collaborator Hadiya Williams explored Black ancestral home spaces through furniture and fabric. 

Now she’s teaching people across the country how to do the work themselves. 

For Nicole, fabric is never just the finishing touch. 

It can completely change a chair’s attitude. A traditional frame can suddenly feel weird and graphic. An old family piece can stop looking like something from your grandmother’s house and start looking like something you’d actually put in yours. 

That’s the fun part. 

Then comes the part no one sees on Instagram. 

So what actually happens in those three hours? What surprises people? 

“People are surprised by how hard the process is, which always surprises me! They’re surprised by how many staples they have to remove, how much their hands hurt afterward, how many layers a chair contains. It’s not just what the eye sees on the surface.” 

Ha. Yeah. There’s a reason upholsterers charge what they charge. 

Nicole provides everything: tools, padding, materials, and fabric (courtesy of Crypton). She also pre-approves every piece of furniture attendees bring ahead of time. Someone tried to submit a sofa. 

The pace is intentional too. 

“This craft requires slow movement, patience, it unfurls over time. There is nothing fast about it.” 

No shortcuts. No racing to the finished photo. You have to do the work. And somewhere around staple number 400, you start caring quite a bit about the fabric you’re putting back on. 

Students had access to Crypton fabrics in all kinds of colors, textures, and patterns, along with the stain resistance and cleanability we’re known for. So they could make the chair interesting without wondering if they were making it too precious to actually use. 

What’s it been like having Crypton’s performance fabrics in the mix? 

“I cannot express how overjoyed I am to have Crypton as a partner. It’s been the most fun I’ve had playing and experimenting with fabric in years. I get to share these incredible patterns and colors with students who are so curious about how to mix and match prints. It’s been really invigorating to invite people to explore and not overthink what they think the chair needs to look like.” 

That last part is probably our favorite. Don’t overthink what the chair should look like. Traditional frame, crazy print? Go for it. 

Inherited chair, unexpected color? Sure. A flea-market find that everyone else walked past because the upholstery was tragic? Even better. 

Performance fabric has had a boring reputation for way too long, but Nicole’s workshops make a pretty good argument against it. Students have even asked for more fabric after every single class, and we’re not mad about it. 

And when Nicole showed them the performance side of the fabrics, including the demo on how liquids bead up and roll right off Crypton, people paid attention. 

“They are ecstatic. Especially people with children and pets. They love knowing they can care for their pieces at home without calling in a professional every time.” 

Which makes sense. Nobody wants to spend hours saving a chair only to be afraid to sit in it. 

One of the best things about reupholstery is that it keeps good furniture in use. You don’t necessarily need a new chair, but you’d love to see the old one differently. 

Last one. What do you hope people actually walk away with? 

“I really want people to walk away with a sense of joy and gratitude to themselves for having transformed something with their own hands that they can be proud of. I want them to walk away feeling, ‘I had no idea what I was walking into, but I felt cared for and supported by someone who did not rush me.’” 

That’s the whole thing right there. People might come in as strangers, but many times they leave exchanging numbers. Some travel from out of state just to get a seat at the table. We met one woman who drove from Tennessee to Chicago and another who had just moved to Chicago from New York.  

Nicole says every workshop has left her near tears, not because someone brought another sofa, but because people helped and encouraged each other throughout the day. They leave with a finished chair, yes. But they also leave knowing they made it. 

In 2027, Nicole is bringing the workshops home to Minneapolis and inviting people to come to her. Before that, she’s closing out 2026 with a two-hour virtual master class, Anatomy of a Chair, this November. Trust us, you want in, so grab your spot now. Also, be sure to give her a follow on Instagram, and tell her we sent ya!

Discover More Performance Fabric Inspiration

Looking for where to buy our fabric? Check out a few of our favorite brand partners!

This exclusive fabric line is now available at Rowe Furniture and debuted at High Point Market. Check out the Heritage Collection.