FACK.UP 

Is an upholstery business run by me, Faye Ackland, out of my home in Hamilton, Ontario.  I specialize in Marine and Custom work.  I enjoy that my work is hands-on, creatively stimulating, and satisfying.  My diverse experiences enable me to think outside the box and find unconventional solutions to unique projects.

I started working with MarineMaid in 2015.  It was there that I learned most of what I know about boats and marine upholstery.

MarineMaid was voted Best In The West in NewsNowNiagara for Upholstery (that's me!) in 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020 (click the years to see the publication).  

I've put in a fair bit of time at Goldstar, doing car seat cover repairs, and leather airplane seats at JAS Products.

My passion for sewing started as a child when I went through phases of making custom clothes for my dolls, sheet dresses for myself and my friends, and continued through high school, where I took all the fashion and sewing classes available and did my co-op at a Hamilton clothing boutique called Serendipity in 1999.

In 2002 I achieved a diploma of Fashion Design at the International Academy of Design and Technology in Montreal where I graduated with honours.

I worked as a design assistant at K T H Sportswear Industries Ltd, a womenswear design house supplying stores such as Reitmans and Sears, for 3 years doing technical sketches and illustrations using Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop.

I took a short hiatus while I sought change in my life.

Following that I worked for 2 years at Getracan, a menswear design house supplying such stores as Giant Tiger and Le Jean Bleu, under the title of Graphic Designer.  While here I used Macromedia Freehand and Adobe Photoshop. The job was exactly the same as the previous, assisting the designer, but I got to be creative in this position which was more satisfying.

Then, more change, in 2008 I moved to Australia! 

I looked for work in the fashion industry but being a few hours outside of Sydney there weren't many options.  I ended up being sponsored (work visa) by a very small company which made retractable spraybooths, which is now operating as Rollabooth.  I found a LOT of enjoyment single-handedly running my department, where I changed the design to evolve with booth modifications and produced the heavy PVC covering for the product.

This was when I realized how much more I like to work with my hands and see an item go from concept to realization than sitting on a computer focusing on one small part of the process.

I took another hiatus while I raised a baby and moved back to Canada in 2015 to be closer to my family.  Soon after, I was exploring working opportunities, and that was when I found an ad from MarineMaid looking for someone to do upholstery; I figured I'd give it a shot, and I've been doing Marine Upholstery ever since!  Something happened in 2020 that pushed me to work from home and FACK.UP was born.