Chances are, you'll find yourself asking 'what is this? What does it do? And maybe even, 'what is this called?' After all, if you were to pick up a permanent marker without knowing what it was or what it did, how could you possibly know what it's called?
Here at Padgham Upholstery, we get a lot of unusual requests from customers who aren't sure what the items they're looking for are actually called. So, when you're struggling to find the right words to describe what you're looking for, you can rest assured you're not alone!
For instance, Coconut Fibre, which is used as padding in traditional upholstery, often gets called coir or even curly coir. We could be wrong, but we're assuming novice upholsters have adopted these names because of how much coconut fibre looks like the fibrous material that's found between the hard, internal shell and the outer coat of a coconut, which is called coir.
The good news is, if you head into our upholstery supplies store in Melbourne and asked for any of the above, we would still know exactly what you're after.
Hessian is popular among upholsters because is supplies a strong base to work on and can be used in all upholstery projects, both antique and modern.
Webbing provides the foundation of a good upholstery job, so, chances are, you'll probably pop in looking for some of this at some point. Even though it's technically called webbing, if you refer to it using one of the following names we'll still know what you're talking about.
We also have people commonly reference staple removers as staple lifters or staple pullers, or Coil springs as conical springs and hourglass springs. While buttoning needles get mistaken for tufting needles and bent packing needles as potato bag needles.
Have you ever mistaken an upholstery product for something with a funny name? Let us know in the comments.