A Port Coquitlam designer and artist is turning exercise balls into functional and fashionable home accessories.
Like most great ideas, Darya Ahmadi’s creation was borne of necessity; she could never find a place in her studio apartment to hide her big ugly rubber exercise ball whenever company came over. It ruined her decor.
So she put on her designer hat and used her skills as a sewer for Chanel and seamstress for a bridal boutique to create stylish leather covers that slip over the balls to turn them into conversation pieces or even functional furniture.
“Many people have them in their home,” Ahmadi said of the giant rubber orbs people use for stretching, yoga, or even just to sit on to enhance their posture. “But they have no place to hide it.”
Or if they do hide it, they forget about using it - out of sight, out of mind.
Ahmadi, 43, came to her creation after a long, and sometimes winding, journey. After coming to Canada from Tehran, Iran in 2006, she realized her background in psychology didn’t go far in her new home. She could barely speak English and the cultural divide meant many of lessons she learned didn’t apply to North America.
But Ahmadi did know how to sew. She enrolled in the Fashion Design program at Vancouver Community Collage where she was selected as one of 25 finalists in the Telio Competition at the 2012 Montreal Fashion Week where students from across Canada are challenged to create a design to a theme from a selection of fabrics.
“All the time I’m thinking of creating something, no matter if it’s fabric or metal” Ahmadi said. “I think I have a creative mind.”
An opportunity took her to California to work as a graphics and set designer in the film industry for four years, and gave her some experience designing and building furniture and sets, some of which she showcases in her live/work space in the Dominion Triangle area.
It wasn’t until a car accident two years ago the ball started rolling towards Ahmadi’s latest creation. She got an exercise ball to help her with stretching exercises for her injured back. But as she quickly discovered, it was an eyesore in her carefully designed living space.
Ahmadi’s sewed a number of ball covers for friends, and she’s even created a few designs with animal themes for kids’ rooms. Now she’s looking for ways to ramp up production on a larger scale.
It can be, she’s discovered, an arduous and expensive proposition.
But Ahmadi is confident she’ll be able to design a solution.
“Designing is a process from A to B,” she said. “If you know the process to put everything together, you can go from imagination to making it real.”
For more information about Ahmadi’s exercise ball covers, email her at [email protected]
