Chance encounter leads Grace UWFaith to ‘Tie One On’

By Carol Cranford

COLUMBIA—In August, Grace United Methodist Church’s United Women in Faith held its annual “Name Your Price” indoor yard sale, where all proceeds go to missions. For the first time, we augmented our sale with a women’s boutique, where clothes, jewelry and purses were elegantly displayed in one of our Sunday school classrooms.

I was blessed to spend the morning working in the boutique, where I met Barbara Howse-Diemer. Barbara struck up a conversation with me, and I learned she loved to repurpose vintage jewelry by adding them as pieces to her large floral pin creations. After showing me photos of her gorgeous pins, Barbara told me she also wove men’s neckties together to form chair seat covers.

Barbara said she was quite successful at selling both her floral pins and chairs at craft shows. Also, she shared that people often asked her to incorporate (often deceased) loved one’s ties into seat covers of their own.

Although weaving neck ties together to form chair seats seemed quite the daunting task, Barbara assured me it was actually quite easy.

As luck would have it, we had a few chairs that had not sold at the yard sale. Barbara readily agreed to my request for her to come to one of our 2025 UWFaith meetings and instruct the women on how to perform her craft. She gave me one of her cards, and I chuckled because Barbara’s chairmaking business was called “Tie One On.”

She arrived at our February meeting armed with several large bags filled to the brim with neckties. After sharing some personal information—about her being a retired dance teacher who has been involved with Leeza’s Care Connection since its conception—she put us to work.

Although her instructions were easy to follow, the task became a challenge. While weaving and tying and turning the chairs upside down and then back up again, we were amazed that Barbara could complete a chair seat all by herself. In one case, it took three of us working together to finish only one chair!

But oh, how remarkable it was to see the finished products. We were so proud of what we accomplished that we donated two chairs to the church library. Old neckties, which might have ended up stuffed in a closet or left off at the dump or a landfill, had metamorphosized by our hands into pieces that were both functional and lovely.

And none of that would have happened without my chance encounter with Barbara Howze-Diemer—now a new friend—who invited me to join her in “tying one on.”