The arts and crafts of consignment
New shop offers new avenue for craftspeople in Yellowknife

Anne-Marie Jennings
Northern News Services

NNSL (Jul 17/98) - A recently opened upholstery shop in Yellowknife will not only repair your old furniture, but will help budding artists sell their latest creations.

"The crafts are a way to get people to come into the store," Susan Binkley says. "They come in to see the crafts, but they see that we do upholstering as well."

"Most people then remember they have a piece of furniture which is in need of repair sitting in their house."

Binkley has been working as an upholsterer for the past 19 years, most of that time spent in Saskatchewan. She and Jan Wouters, a former employee of the GNWT, opened their doors last year.

Cover All Upholstery and Crafts first opened at a location on Franklin Ave., but recently made the move to a larger space on 50th Street. Both say the move has been a good decision.

"We are getting more walk-ins here," Binkley says. "It's a good spot to be in because people are always walking by our window."

Both Wouters and Binkley say they are always looking for crafts to put in their front window -- and nothing is out of the question.

"We'd really love to get more Northern art in our window," Wouters says.

All crafts which appear in the store's window are sold on consignment, which means a percentage of the price goes to the store and the remaining money goes to the artist.

"We do crafts ourselves, and we want to encourage other people to bring us their crafts," Binkley says. "We know there are all kinds of people who do crafts on their own time."

As for the upholstering side of things, Wouters says she is still learning all the tricks of the trade.

"I was doing this only on weekends for eight months. It's only been the past two months I've been doing this full-time. There is a lot of lifting and stretching involved in reupholstering."

The duo will also do on-site estimates for people in Yellowknife who may have a piece of furniture they are considering having recovered.

"We've even had cushions sent to us from Norman Wells and Fort Smith," Binkley says. "We do the repairs and send them back."

No job is too big or two small for the two upholsterers, and Binkley says she has dealt with a number of different challenges when it comes to recovering certain pieces.

"I've had people bring me pieces which took a bit of planning to figure out how I would do the job," she says.

But furniture is not the only items which Binkley has been asked to recover.

"I've been approached to do re-upholstering for the inside of older automobiles," she says. "I've done a couple of jobs for people for show cars."

Binkley adds that she is also a bit of a perfectionist, covering and recovering a piece of furniture left in her care until the job is done correctly.

Further down the line, Cover All Upholstery and Crafts would like to recover and sell pieces of furniture.

"We've got a large enough space here that we could do that," Wouters says. "But it's not that easy to find older pieces of furniture in Yellowknife."