Can learning upholstery make you Smarter?

Of course it can! I've been upholstering for 2 decades now so I'm practically a genius. 

Jokes aside, here's my take on how learning new manual skills such as upholstery enriches your life, makes you smarter, teaching you tenacity and resilience in the process. 


Upholstery is the art of working with textiles, leather, and other materials to cover and restore furniture. Learning upholstery from a professional can not only help you develop practical skills but can also contribute to your personal growth and make you smarter. A professional is only a professional because they have made 10,000 mistakes, learnt from them and with tenacity improved on their chosen skill set. Here are ten ways learning upholstery can make you smarter:

1. Develops Problem-Solving Skills
   Upholstery involves measuring, cutting, and shaping materials to fit furniture. To do this, you need to develop problem-solving skills to figure out how to work with different shapes and sizes of furniture pieces.
   
   
   
2. Boosts Creativity
   Upholstery allows you to unleash your creative side by selecting materials, colours, and patterns that suit your personal taste and style. This helps to develop your sense of creativity. Expressing yourself through design is really rewarding. I get a rush of dopamine every time I pick the perfect contrast piping colour to the main fabric on the body of the chair. 
   
   
   
3. Improves Attention to Detail
   Upholstery requires a high level of attention to detail to ensure that the fabric fits smoothly and neatly around the furniture. This helps to develop your focus and attention to detail skills. Focus, or the lack of it, has got to be one of the hottest topics in the space of productivity due to the rise of endless distractions on social media. Personally I like to wrestle with wrinkles whilst listening to some dub techno. It can get me into that magical, productive flow state.
    
   
   
4. Increases Hand-Eye Coordination
   Working with upholstery materials requires a high level of hand-eye coordination to measure, cut and sew fabrics to fit around the furniture. This helps to develop your coordination skills.
   
   
   
5. Enhances Patience
   Upholstery can be time-consuming, requiring you to take your time to ensure that the fabric fits properly around the furniture. This helps to develop your patience and perseverance skills.
   
   
   
6. Encourages Precision
   Upholstery requires precision in measuring and cutting fabrics to fit around furniture. This helps to develop your precision skills.
   
   
   
7. Builds Confidence
   Learning upholstery from a professional can help you gain the confidence to work on different types of furniture pieces. This helps to develop your self-esteem and confidence. I encourage my students to tackle projects that are just beyond their reach. What usually happens is they are thrilled with themselves for having tackled what seemed like a daunting project to begin with.
   
   
   
8. Promotes Problem-Solving
   Upholstery requires you to think outside the box to figure out how to work with different shapes and sizes of furniture. This helps to develop your problem-solving skills.
   
   
   
9. Increases Knowledge
   Learning upholstery from a professional allows you to acquire knowledge about different types of fabrics, tools, and techniques used in upholstery. This helps to broaden your knowledge base.
   
   
   
10. Fosters Creativity
    Upholstery allows you to create unique pieces of furniture that reflect your personal taste and style. This helps to foster your creativity and develop your personal style.
    
    
    

In conclusion, learning upholstery from a professional, like myself, can help you develop practical skills and contribute to your personal growth. It can make you smarter by developing your problem-solving skills, creativity, attention to detail, hand-eye coordination, patience, precision, confidence, problem-solving, knowledge, and creativity. So why not give it a try? You may surprise yourself with how much you enjoy it and how much it helps you grow as a person. Check out the courses we offer here if this has piqued your interest. 

Have a good week! 
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