Beth Hodges Soft Furnishings
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About Beth Hodges and Soft Furnishings
 
Beth Hodges
Beth Hodges

Beth Hodges is the owner of Soft Furnishings, a workroom located in Elberton, Georgia, which, after 25 years, is still based in the downstairs of her home. She operated Soft Furnishings for the first eight years as a one-person retail workroom. Now, Soft Furnishings has expanded to employ five people and provides a wide variety of wholesale workroom services around the country. The workroom has grown incrementally through Beth’s attention to customer service and her product knowledge. She attends shows and seminars regularly, and strives to keep Soft Furnishings’ methods up to date and at the very highest end of the current industry standards.

Each project is handled with individual attention, and great care is taken to “engineer” each job for optimum results. Each of the seamstresses employed by Soft Furnishings has over 30 years of experience, and takes extreme pride in the production of high quality window treatments and accessories.  

Soft Furnishings specializes in the “difficult” jobs. Kingston and Empire treatments, custom headboards and canopies have become a particular favorite. Design assistance, with proper attention to the appropriateness of period, style, proportion and detail is offered on each job undertaken. Hodges, an accomplished drapery installer, is the Professional Installation Techniques instructor at the Custom Home Furnishings Academy in Charlotte, North Carolina. She has been presenting seminars around the country for twelve years and has developed a series of seminars ranging from installation information to complicated pattern drafting and construction methods.

As an installer and fabricator, she has a unique perspective on the engineering window treatments and the way they work. In addition to seminars, Beth is the senior member of a gifted group of professionals who offer private consultations through the Custom Home Furnishings Academy.

The Immediate Past President of the Window Coverings Association of America, Hodges has served as a director of the WCAA for ten years having held the offices of treasurer, vice president, chairperson of the Workroom Committee, and chairperson of the Education Committee. She has been certified by Window Fashions Magazine as a Window Fashions Certified Professional at the highest level: Expert, and has been certified by the Window Coverings Association of America as both a Certified Window Coverings Professional and as a Certified Workroom Professional. Beth was the recipient of the Elberton-Elbert County Chamber of Commerce’s Entrepreneur of the year.

Beth Hodges, CWP, CWTC, WFCP

Certified Workroom Professional  Custom Home Furnishings Academy   Certified Window Treatment Consultant  

Window Coverings Association of America

Beth has taught classes for the Custom Home Furnishings Conference, International Window Coverings Expo, Draperies and Window Coverings Magazine, Window Fashions Magazine, and many Window Coverings Association of America local chapters including the North East Chapter, Southeast Pennsylvania Chapter, Atlanta Chapter, Phoenix Chapter, Triangle Chapter, Jacksonville Chapter, Central New Jersey Chapter and the San Jose Chapter.

Beth is proud to have been a member of the team who presented The Window Coverings Weekend Academy which traveled the country offering top quality education to workroom professionals and interior designers and decorators across the country. She has been a featured speaker at many window coverings conferences and meetings of window coverings professionals.

Topics that have been presented include:

  • Beautiful Banding
  • Altering Purchased Patterns
  • Back to Basics: The Traverse Rods
  • Creating Difficult Treatments
  • Creating Patterns
  • Decorating Difficult Windows
  • Embellishments and Trims
  • Empire and Kingstons
  • Five Not So Easy Pieces (step by step directional for difficult treatments)
  • Become a Hardware Expert
  • Little Things That Make a Big Difference
  • Measure Twice Drill Once
  • Inspired Skirted Panels
  • Starting and Running an Installation Business
  • The Proper Use Wall Anchors
  • What Designers and Workrooms Need to Know About Installation
  • Dressing Window Treatments
  • Communication Between the Designer and the Workroom
  • Cutting techniques for the Smaller Workroom
  • Rules of Customer Communication and Service
  • The Little Things That Make A Big Difference
  • What Every Designer Should Know About Installation
  • Measuring to Avoid Disasters

Beth will happily build a seminar to suit your group if you book ahead in order to allow time for its development.

Seminars are also available for CONSUMERS: a great business opportunity for interior design firms or for individual store front businesses to bring in customers by offering them knowledge about what services are available to them through interior designers or decorators.

Educate your client list through a seminar adapted specifically to YOUR business.

SPECIAL RATES ARE AVAILABLE FOR WCAA CHAPTERS

CONTACT BETH AT 706 283-8142 OR E-MAIL AT BHODGESDEC@AOL.COMat 706 283-8142 for costs involved.

PUBLICATIONS:

Design New Jersey

Athens Magazine

Northeast Georgia Magazine Book: Dream Windows by Kathleen S. Stoehr


 

D&WC Cover Photo of Beth Hodges, CWP, CWTC, WCAA Immediate Past President and member, WCFP Master, and CHF Techniques Instructor (see photo on left)

The work of Soft Furnishings has been published many times, and Beth has written many articles on installation and construction of window treatments. She has appeared on the cover of Draperies and Window Coverings Magazine, which included a cover story about her business, as well as in articles in Window Fashions Magazine, Sew What? Magazine, and Southern Living.

Copyright 2009 © bethhodges.com