Upholstery Workshop With Velvet Prints

One For Your Bucket List!

Keen to try our hand at upholstery, we booked a day’s workshop in the beautiful Jamberoo Valley with Rapt Upholstery.

Kate Malfroy, also known as the Chairy Godmother, got her Trade Certificate in upholstery at TAFE a number of years ago, and is now a passionate teacher of this dying art. She values rescuing old furniture and reviving the new by covering with exquisite fabrics.

The Upholstery 1.01 workshop is a brilliant introduction to upholstery and you walk away with new skills, new friendships and a gorgeous benchseat!

Here are the Florence Broadhurst fabrics we selected… Neither of us could go past the lustre of Palermo velvet! But any of our base cloths would work.

Upholstery Workshop – The Steps

Kate is a very patient teacher and explains everything in detail. As a beginner this is so valuable as there aren’t shortcuts if it’s to be done properly! With her eye for perfection you leave the workshop with a sound grasp of professional upholstery.

What did help enormously was the fact that the bench bases had already been made, and all but one of the seats had been taken apart meaning we weren’t wasting course time on that. Instead we could practice removing and adding staples on one of the bases.

We then glued the original foam to the board, as well as an extra layer of dacron for comfort and aesthetics.

Once the board had guide marks to help avoid having to remove staples further down the track, we started to tack on the fabric.

Once the buttons were made and threaded, all that was left to do was attach the seat to the bench base and admire our creations!

The workshop ran from 9:30am to 3:30pm with a break for morning tea (and delicious cake supplied by Kate) as well as time for bring-your-own lunch.

Fabric Choice Tips

A design like 4 Colour Palm was easy to work with as the print runs along the seat with no worry about the ‘grain’ of the fabric. The design worked well any way you placed it.

Japanese Floral worked slightly differently as the pattern worked best with the ‘grain’ line running across. This meant we needed to keep an eye on that being placed well. However, the pattern was still random and easy to place.

If you choose something with a particular line (such Swedish Stripe) you’d need slightly more skill in stapling the fabric so that the line is positioned well.

Any of our three base cloths will work perfectly.

How To Book

You can book upholstery workshops with Rapt Upholstery here.