WORK IS GOING SEW WELL

BYLINE: Leigh Allan Dayton Daily News
DATE: October 16, 2001
PUBLICATION: Dayton Daily News (OH)
EDITION: CITY
SECTION: LOCAL
PAGE: 1B
COLUMN: Leigh Allan Column
BLACKSMITH. TINKER. Millwright. Slipcoverer.

Well, maybe not that last one. Slipcovering may not join the other three as occupations now relegated to the old world that hasn't advanced to the ready-made, throw-away society. Not if Donna Reeves has anything to say about it. Since Reeves, 30, graduated from Meadowdale High School, she has worked for the county courts, a hazard waste plant, and in law and insurance. Didn't care for any of them.

From the court job, where she dealt with upset criminals right after sentencing, to the insurance office where she took the irate calls after rate hikes - "There are no happy people in insurance" - Reeves felt like she was just pushing paper. So in 1999, she set up shop as a custom slipcover maker, putting to work 15 years of sewing experience and slipcovering lessons from a friend who was retiring.

I may be a lot more so-and-so than sew-and-sew, but spent last Wednesday following Reeves at her one-woman business she calls Sewliloquy, named to say her work makes a statement. Besides which, since she works alone and is a tad loquacious, she talks to herself now and then.

Reeves guided me through the steps of being hired to do a piece, shopping for material, measuring and cutting and padding and tucking and smoothing and pinning and sewing. And, for work she does at home rather than her leased workroom, the use of a magnetic pin collector to keep her husband, Mark, from getting a tad upset over holes in his feet. Since Mark is still recovering from an injury caused when he helped set up her workroom, that's a critical piece of equipment.

There isn't much other critical equipment. Reeves has two sewing machines and a surger, but the overhead's so low the business has paid for itself from the start. She began part-time, but got so deluged she had to give it up for a while, since she needed to keep her office job to help qualify for a mortgage. After a few months away, she felt she had to go back to what she loved doing, and has been at it full-time ever since.

Reeves mostly covers chairs and sofas, often expensive pieces belonging to older folks who don't toss things away idly. At $250 or so for a chair, around $400 for a sofa, plus fabric, the work's not cheap, but it's a lot less expensive than buying good furniture or re-upholstering. She even has customers who get multiple covers to switch seasonally.

A chaise she was covering Wednesday was somebody's Goodwill find, a good frame with worn fabric. Reeves says that's a cost-effective way to go, because thrift shops often have well-made, but worn pieces for a pittance.

She also does bedcovers, drapes, even clothing alterations, and has an innovative idea that could really make business boom - replacing buttons and zippers with Velcro on the clothes of arthritic older folks. Nursing homes she's called have been enthusiastic about the concept.

Reeves doesn't want business to boom enough to necessitate employees. She'll contract out if need be, as she did to get 120 chairs done in 10 days for the short-lived Mr. Thom's restaurant, but that's it.

Instead she takes her time, makes herself work nine to five, with an hour break for her Jehovah's Witness work, and smiles a whole heck of a lot. And when Sewliloquy moves soon to a new craft barn, Reeves plans to give lessons, in hopes the skill she loves won't die out.

Then, after a day of sewing and teaching, she'll relax with her hobby.

Crocheting.

* Contact Leigh Allan at 225-7317 or leigh_allan@coxohio.com
Copyright, 2001, Cox Ohio Publishing. All rights reserved.