Start here.

Every student who walks into our workshop starts on the same piece, and it isn’t the one they arrived wanting to do. It’s the drop-in dining seat: about four hours at the bench, roughly £20 of materials, and every fundamental of the craft in miniature. This page is the exact path we put them on — what to buy, what to read, and what to do, in order. Follow it and by the end you’ll have a finished seat you made yourself, and the calibrated hands to make the next one better.

Why the first piece is chosen for you

The drop-in seat is the removable webbed pad from a Georgian, Victorian or reproduction dining chair — lift it out, turn the chair over, and you’ll see the rebate it sits in. It’s the only piece of upholstery you can completely ruin and not feel bad about: the materials cost about £10–20, the chair frame underneath is untouched, and your first attempt can go straight in the bin without consequence. No springs, no stitched edges, no buttoning, no sewing machine. Just the three skills everything else is built on — webbing, stuffing, covering — on a frame small enough to hold in your hands.

Every Greenwood Upholstery student does ten of these in their first month. You should do at least five before you move on. That isn’t a rule for the sake of it — it’s how your hands learn tension, and there is no reading your way around that.

What to buy before you start

Two shopping lists: the tools, which you buy once and keep for life, and the materials, which you buy per seat. Between them, budget £65–80 plus your show fabric.

The path — six steps, in order

Reckon on one quiet evening of reading, then about four hours at the bench — double that on a first attempt, which is normal and fine. A comfortable single Saturday, or a very relaxed weekend.

1. 0

   Read first — one evening

   ~1 hour, tea in hand

   Read The Anatomy of an Upholstered Piece so the words mean something, then read the Drop-In Dining Seat chapter end to end once, without touching anything. That chapter is your textbook for the day; this page is just the route to it. Before ordering fabric, skim Choosing the Right Fabric — and if the chair will live in a UK home, run your fabric choice through the fire regulations checker. Torn between two fabrics? The free visualiser shows each one on a photo of your actual chair before you order.

   Watch for: the urge to skip ahead to the bench. The single most common beginner error happens here — cutting show fabric before understanding the order of the layers beneath it.

2. 1

   Strip the pad

   30–45 min

   Lift the pad out, photograph it in place, then strip it in reverse order of construction with the ripping chisel — bottom layer first, then the show fabric from the top. Save the old show fabric flat on the bench: it’s the best cutting pattern you’ll get. Inspect the bare frame for splits and old tack damage, then drop it back into the chair to check it sits flush with about 5 mm of clearance all round. Full detail in Stripping the Old Work.

   Watch for: levering against the polished show-wood of the chair itself. All your force goes into the disposable pad-frame, never the chair.

3. 2

   Webbing

   ~1 hour first time

   The simplest layout in the book: three webs front-to-back, three side-to-side, interlaced — fixed to the top face of the pad-frame with the five-tack pattern at every end (three tacks through a single layer, fold the end back, two more through the doubled fold). Tension to 12–15% stretch with the strainer — on a drop-in the webbing carries the whole load alone. The Webbing chapter covers the pattern, the strainer technique and the drum-tap test in full.

   Watch for: the tap test. Stand the webbed frame on edge and tap the centre with a finger — it should sound like a slack drum head. If it slaps, re-strain it now, not after the stuffing’s on.

4. 3

   Stuffing

   ~1 hour

   Hessian (US: burlap) over the webbing, then the stuffing — and here you choose your tradition. Teased horsehair under a felt skim is the traditional route (Stuffing & Stitched Edges); a 50 mm slab of 32 kg/m³ foam is the modern one (Foam Construction). Both are legitimate; a drop-in is the ideal place to try the traditional method precisely because no stitched edge is needed — the chair’s rebate defines the edge for you.

   Watch for: lumps. Tease the hair properly and work the regulator; a lump you can feel now is a lump the sitter feels for the next thirty years.

5. 4

   Calico, wadding & top cover

   ~1 hour

   Calico (US: muslin) first — the dress rehearsal that sets the shape and lets you make every mistake on £3 of cloth instead of your show fabric. Then wadding (US: batting), then the top cover: centre it, temporary-tack, work opposite sides outward from the middles, and fold the corners into clean pleats. The Calico, Wadding & Top Cover chapter covers tensioning order and corner pleats in detail.

   Watch for: pile direction on velvets and patterned cloth — decide which way is “up” before you cut, and keep it the same across a set of chairs.

6. 5

   Bottoming cloth, refit — and sign it

   ~20 min

   Black bottoming cloth (US: cambric dust cover) over the underside to close the work, edges turned under, then drop the finished pad home into its rebate. Workshop tradition says you sign and date the underside — do it. Somebody strips this seat in forty years and finds you.

   Watch for: a pad that’s now too fat for the rebate. If it won’t seat flush, the excess is nearly always bunched fabric at the corners underneath, not the stuffing.

The five mistakes that catch every beginner

Cutting the show fabric first. The expensive cloth goes on last and gets measured against the finished calico shape, not the bare frame. Skipping the fold-over on the webbing. Three tacks through a single layer of jute tear out under load; the five-tack pattern with the doubled fold is not optional. Guitar-string webbing. Over-tensioned jute is pre-stressed near its tear point — you want a slack drum head, not a high ring. Skipping the calico. It feels like a layer you could omit; it’s actually the rehearsal that makes the top cover easy. Cheap materials. Six-strand DIY-shop webbing and bargain wadding cost you the job twice — once in the working and again in a year when it sags.

Where the path goes next

When you’ve got five drop-ins behind you, each rung below adds one or two new skills to what you already have. This is the same ladder we run students up, and there’s no prize for skipping rungs — the wing-back is exactly as hard as the number of skills you arrive without.

1. Drop-in dining seat — you are here

   Webbing, stuffing, covering. The fundamentals in miniature, five times over.

2. Stuffover dining chair

   The cover is now fixed to the chair itself. Adds your first small stitched edge and the V-cut around show-wood.

3. Stool / pouffe

   Round work, borders, and your first buttoning — the six-around-one drum stool.

4. Headboard

   Big flat panels: the ply–foam–Dacron build, float buttoning, and handling metres of fabric cleanly.

5. Wing-back armchair

   The full traditional build — springs, five stitched-edge pads, eight cover panels. The piece you wanted to start on, now within reach.

6. Chesterfield sofa

   Deep buttoning (US: diamond tufting) in leather. The summit of the trade — everything below on this list, at scale.

Is upholstery hard to learn?

The fundamentals are not. A careful beginner working from clear instructions can strip and re-upholster a drop-in dining seat in about four hours with roughly £20 of materials — no springs, no stitched edges, no sewing machine. What takes years is speed and judgement: reading an unfamiliar frame, tensioning by ear, cutting expensive fabric with confidence. That only comes from repetition, which is why the right first project matters far more than any amount of reading — and why the wrong one (a sprung armchair, say) defeats so many people who would have succeeded on the right one.

How long until I can tackle a proper armchair?

For most careful beginners, a season of evenings and weekends: five drop-in seats (US: slip seats), a stuffover chair or two, and a buttoned stool — then the wing-back is a long project rather than an impossible one. The wing-back chapter is honest about the hours involved; arrive with the ladder’s skills already in your hands and every one of those hours is spent building the chair instead of fighting it. And if what you actually want is the armchair finished rather than the craft learned, there’s no shame in that — find a good upholsterer near you and keep the drop-ins for pleasure.