Restorative Process

Consider them the fixers, but in a nonthreatening way. From giving new life to furniture pieces to painstakingly restoring artwork to repairing bikes through purpose-driven work, these local women are making the old new again.

The fabric of CLAIRE RENAUD’s career has been, quite literally, fabric. A retired theater costume maker, she now uses textiles and leather to create jewelry and three-dimensional artwork. She is also a rescuer: She gives old furniture new life through artful reupholstery and restores antique sewing machines to sell to collectors.

Renaud’s creative journey began when she was a teenager. “Our family was from Vermont, and I am one of sixteen children – the baby girl with one younger brother,” she says. “All my siblings are artists or artistic, and I grew up watching them do all these different things. Someone in the family could fix whatever was broken. My father was a cabinet maker. We had access to all his machines and tools and grew up in his woodshop.”

At sixteen, Renaud used to skip school and walk to her sister’s house, where they would make costumes. People started paying to borrow them, so the two started a business. When, three years later, Renaud married and moved to New Hampshire, she used her costume-making skills to start her own enterprise. At first her stock was largely Halloween costumes, but she transitioned into show business and grew both her staff and her output.

“My business grew until I had 20,000 theatrical costumes, which we shipped across the country,” she says. “Our specialty was Disney shows; our number one show was Beauty and the Beast, for which we had thirteen sets of each costume, sized to fit children up to plus-size adults.”

When she moved to Wilmington during the pandemic, Renaud sold her business. With no shows to serve and no local staff, she felt it was time to pick up a new thread.

“I was also an artist, a juried member of the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen,” she explains. “In Wilmington, I found Eclipse. That’s where my work is displayed. I make furniture and a lot of recycled art, but my biggest-selling items are witch hats. I started making miniature ones from old leftover cloth from my business, but on a whim, I decided to make full-size hats.”

Renaud also began volunteering with Historic Wilmington Foundation (HWF).

“I’m around the old things I love and doing something with a purpose,” she says. “I teach upholstery classes: We work on a piece there, and then the foundation sells it. The workshops sell out instantly, and there’s always a waiting list.”

Renaud purchases old items of furniture from HWF’s salvage lot and brings them back to life in new ways. On newly reupholstered chairs she appliqués a fabric animal, flower, or other design.

“I paint with my sewing machine,” she says. “I start with a solid piece of fabric, sketch the outline on the back, and paint the picture with thousands of yards of thread. My favorite is an antique easy chair with a giant octopus.”

She also makes “toadstools” – old stools upholstered with thread “paintings” of toads on the seat. And she’s currently restoring two antique barber chairs, part of her ongoing creative journey.

To view more of photographer Madeline Gray’s work, go to madelinegrayphoto.com.

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