Bradenton Seamstress Makes Slip Covers for Home and Marine Interiors

Business owner Carrie Adamcik doesn't dream of retirement. After more than 40 years in business she is still passionate about her work — and it shows in her design, creativity and the number of satisfied and return customers loyal to  .

Adamcik runs her business from the Village of the Arts, where she produces high-quality slipcovers for chairs, loveseats and sofas for home and marine interiors. Her versatility in design and location sets her apart from others in the industry, she said.

“There are a lot of upholsterers, but I don’t really know of any others who specialize in marine interiors,” she said. “Slip covers are kind of a special market, too. With slip covers, you have to be very exact with your measurements, so it’s much faster to do upholstery, where most of what you’re doing is pulling and stapling. I find that too physical, though. I actually happen to prefer working on slip covers.”

Adamcik, who has enjoyed sewing her entire life, was a stay-at-home mom, raising three kids when she turned her hobby into a career.

“I had to figure out a way to make money without leaving the house so it just seemed natural to start sewing,” Adamcik recalled.

Originally from Michigan, Adamcik moved to Bradenton 32 years ago and immediately fell in love with the style and way of living on Florida’s Gulf coast.

“I’ve really grown to enjoy living and working in the coastal area,” she said. “I do everything from sophisticated to shabby chic, but some of my favorite projects are the ones in which I get to create that relaxed look that is so natural to Florida’s style.”

Adamcik ran a full upholstery shop on Anna Maria Island, which is where she said she began to hone her niche in creating upholstery and slip covers for marine interiors.

“I was out on the island, so it was only natural,” she said. “I had a lot of clients out there and once I was done with their homes, they would ask me to do their boats.”

Maureen Sikes, who remodeled a yacht that she and her husband live on, said she turned to Adamcik for help. The businesswoman took over the project.

"She did an absolutely fabulous job," Sikes said. "She was literally getting up at 2:00 in the morning to work on it and I didn't even know about that. But she's a perfectionist to the nth degree, and we're just tickled with the work she did."

Once her youngest child headed off to college, Adamcik decided it time to make a change for herself, so she joined the Peace Corps. After working 18 months with the organization as a business advisor in Tonga, an island in the south Pacific, Adamcik returned to Bradenton and picked right back up with her sewing machine. Retirement never even crossed her mind.

“I love doing furniture," she said. "I go to bed early and I get up early to work – and I like it that way. It’s the kind of thing that, if you don’t have a passion for it, you can’t do for very long. Sometimes I think, ‘Maybe I should get a life,’ but the truth is, I love what I do.”

Even when a car accident in February left her with a cracked hip, she was only out of commission for a short time before she was back to work.

“I simply don’t have the patience to be down that long,” she said.

Adamcik’s dedication to her craft and quick turnaround time is part of what keeps her customers so satisfied. Most of her projects are completed in a week. Even the most labor-intensive projects take no longer than two weeks, she said.

Adamcik also designs her own patterns. Doing so provides more flexibility and makes it easier for her to make changes and corrections as she works with her clients’ furniture, she said.

The rave reviews she receives from her customers have made it possible to sustain her business almost entirely on word of mouth.

“I’m fortunate to have clients that are very vocal,” she said. “The only reason I even keep a one-liner in the yellow pages is so that my clients I worked with 20 years ago know I’m still around. I took it out one year and got a bunch of panicked phone calls from people who thought I was out of business.”

Going out of business is not part of Adamcik’s plan – or at least not any time soon. In addition to her slip cover work, she also plans to begin selling hand-crafted pillows online.

“I’m going to do it forever until the Lord takes me home,” she said. “I’ve made too many great friends over the years and if I quit now, I think I would miss it too much. When I first came here I heard about a woman who did it until she was 92 years old. Maybe I’ll be lucky enough to keep doing  it that long.”