‘A little bit grit and a whole lot of God’s grace.’ Artisan Shannon Quick remakes broken, discarded items new again.
Published 4:41 pm Wednesday, April 2, 2025
These stools capture the southwestern look Quick is known for. She draws from her childhood memories of attending rodeos and raising cattle. Amanda Shavers | The Cullman Times
Shannon Quick brings a fresh look to long-abandoned items while maintaining the character of the original piece. Amanda Shavers | The Cullman Times
A reimagined guitar strap. Amanda Shavers | The Cullman Times
Shannon Quick brings a fresh look to long-abandoned items while maintaining the character of the original piece. Amanda Shavers | The Cullman Times
Quick has found a variety of uses for hides including bookmarks, purse straps, home decor and these glasses cases. Amanda Shavers | The Cullman Times
Quick has found a variety of uses for hides including bookmarks, purse straps, home decor and these glasses cases. Amanda Shavers | The Cullman Times
Whether you are looking to bring new life to your old, outdated, hand-me-down furniture or you are looking to add a bit of rodeo-chic to an otherwise drab area of your home, Shannon Quick, owner of Grit and Grace Trading Post, has you covered … or better yet, recovered.
Quick operates Grit and Grace out of her home — originally, the home belonged to her grandmother — just a stone’s throw from where she grew up. It was here that she said she first fell in love with crafting.
Most of Quick’s talents and passion as a craftsperson, she said, had to be credited to her mother. Her earliest involvement in local craft fairs was selling shell necklaces her mother had made. Even her tendency to favor more rough-around-the-edges items stems from the pair’s annual pilgrimage to the World’s Longest Yardsale — a 690 mile event which stretches from Alabama to Michigan — each August.
However, it wasn’t until she had her own children that she really started to spread her wings and begin to take on large scale projects.
Like most elementary age children, Quick said her two daughters began making lavish requests for how they wanted their bedrooms decorated.
“How in the world are you supposed to find kid sized furniture for whatever they are into at a given time,” Quick said. Her answer was to simply make it herself. When her youngest was in third-grade, Quick said she completely transformed her room into a full-fledged (age appropriate) sports bar.
“I made a scoreboard that looked like it had all the lights in it. I hung all all of her motorcycle and basketball jerseys up on the wall in frames,” Quick said. “It sort of all started there because people started telling me they wished they could decorate their kids rooms like that.”
Quick and her family spent the next several years specializing in children’s furniture. Her father — in spite of what she said was his reluctancy to describe himself as “crafty” — would build or renovate different items, while she and her mother let their imaginations run wild incorporating a plethora of bright colors and textures.
“Our booth looked like a little kid explosion,” she said.
Even as her children transitioned into their adult lives, Quick said she remained drawn to furniture until the over-saturation of trends in chalk paint and cottage-core began to make the endeavor much less exciting.
Quick said her mom had begun experimenting with making children’s clothing out of repurposed materials such as table clothes, doilies and even old feed sacs, but she found herself struggling for inspiration. That is until she received an order from a higher authority to begin utilizing a new medium.
As she tells it, Quick was freshly divorced and on the verge of stepping away from crafts all together in 2019. She had, on occasion, a fleeting thought of venturing into furniture upholstery, but had always believed that she lacked the talent or know-how to move beyond painting and finishing her pieces. In fact, she continues to believe that any amount of her success comes from talents gifted to her by God six years ago.
“I honestly don’t believe I have the talent for upholstery. I would look at stuff and think ‘I just don’t know how to do that,’ but I think when I got divorced he gave me that talent,” Quick said. “I remember a very specific day when he said ‘Get busy,” and I knew exactly what it meant.”
Her first instinct was to draw from her childhood memories of raising cattle and attending rodeos for inspiration. She took a tan and white cowhide from the shop behind her house and asked her mother cut it — even under a directive from The Almighty, Quick was afraid she might ruin the expensive piece of leather with a misplaced cut — and began specializing in cowhide furniture.
“The furniture started selling and I just thought ‘Okay, this is what has given me. Here we go,'” Quick said.
She refashioned the excess hide from that first piece into an asymmetrical table runner, which she keeps on her kitchen table as a reminder of where, and from who, she got her start.
Quick accepts custom orders to refurbish a particular piece of furniture to fit whatever aesthetic a customer’s home needs. But, the pieces that she selects for herself, in some ways, act as of a reflection of her own life and journey as a craftsperson.
The pieces Quick finds herself most drawn to are typically the ugliest, dirtiest, broken, discarded items near the end of their life-span. The aspect of her work that she most enjoys is putting those pieces back together after she has stripped away the ripped and faded fabrics, re-oiled any mechanical parts and removed any hornet nests which have found their way inside — although she admitted that she typically calls her father to take care of the last one.
When she has completed her work, these once forgotten items have been swathed in a mixture of rich and colorful cowhides, ornate Pendleton wools and lush velvets that even Opryland elites such as Dolly Parton and Willie Nelson would consider themselves lucky to sink into at the end of the day.
Although Quick does prefer to leave a few scars on exposed pieces of wood to highlight the furniture’s enduring character.
“I can remember even at young age feeling like I had to save things so that they could live again. I felt like that when I was just painting furniture. Then, when I recover furniture I purposefully look for older pieces that someone would say is disgusting. I just think, ‘I’m going to make that thing beautiful and you’re going to beg me for it then,'” Quick said.
The names that Quick has chosen for her businesses were also chosen as a way to share her story, as well as her faith behind it. When Quick was still primarily painting furniture, she selected the name Reborn and printed a brief testimony and scripture somewhere on the back of each piece along with its “reborn date.”
“I would say things like ‘God finds you where you’re at. You may not be pretty and you may have scars, but He sees the beauty in you. He can make you into a better person so that you can enjoy a second life.’ I’ve kind of been doing that all along,” Quick said.
As she began getting feedback that online algorithms made searching for “Reborn” difficult for customers to find her business, Quick said she began brainstorming a new moniker to fit her new venture, but still wanted a name that stayed true her message and personality.
“After I had figured out that I needed to get rid of the name Reborn, I still wanted it to be faith-based so I went Grit and Grace because I’ve always said that life requires just a little bit grit and a whole lot of God’s grace for you to get through it,” Quick said.
To see more of Quick’s work or to inquire about a refurbishment, find her shop online at gritngracetradingpost.com/ and stop by her booth at the 41st Annual Bloomin’ Festival on the campus of St. Bernard Abbey April 5-6.
