Upholsterer CV Examples & Writing Guide

This sample is for an experienced upholsterer who works in a bespoke furniture and contract workshop and started in car and marine trim. The name and businesses are invented. Scale the numbers to your own bench if you are earlier in the trade.

Upholstery workshops are small. The owner is usually the person reading your CV, between jobs, on a phone. Four things decide it.

• What you can finish alone. Can you take a chair from strip-down to bottom cloth with nobody checking on you? Say it in those words. Half the applicants can only do covers over someone else's foundation.
• Whether you sew. Sewing on an industrial walking-foot machine is the split between a helper and an upholsterer in most workshops. If you sew, name the machine and what you sew (piping, zips, boxing, French seams, leather).
• Which side of the trade. Domestic and antique, contract and hospitality, car and marine trim, or production line work in a factory. The skills overlap but not completely, and an owner wants to hear their own words back.
• Speed with quality. Pieces per week, hours per chair, rework or callback rate. A workshop lives or dies on how many jobs go out the door right the first time.

“Tell me you can take a wing chair to the frame, tie the springs and put it back together without asking me anything, and give me photos. That is the whole interview. Anything else, I can teach.”

Two or three lines at the top. Years in the trade, what you can do unsupervised, your machines, one number. No adjectives about being hard-working; the numbers say it.

The problem with most upholstery CVs is that they list the trade rather than the work. Name the operation, the material, and how many. Eight rewrites.

List 12 to 16 skills and make them things a workshop owner would say out loud. Keep them grouped so the reader can find the ones they care about.

Hand and bench skills:

• Strip-down, tack and staple removal without damaging the frame
• Frame repair: re-gluing, dowelling, corner blocks, arm rail replacement
• Webbing (jute and elastic) with a webbing stretcher
• Hand-tied coil springs; serpentine (zigzag) spring fitting and repair
• Hessian, edge roll, cotton felt and horsehair foundations on traditional pieces
• Foam cutting and shaping; polyester wadding and feather wrapping
• Blind stitching, slip stitching, ladder stitch and hand buttoning
• Buttoning, deep buttoning, fluting, pleating
• Piping and double piping, skirts, kick pleats, cambric bottom cloths

Machines and tools:

• Industrial walking-foot sewing machine (Juki, Consew, Singer 111W class); overlocker if you use one
• Pneumatic staple gun and long-nose stapler, tack hammer, magnetic hammer
• Webbing stretcher, ripping chisel, regulator, curved and straight needles
• Hog ring pliers (essential for car seat covers)
• Foam saw, band knife or hot wire; button-making machine
• Steamer and fabric shears; leather clicker press if the workshop has one

Materials knowledge (this is what separates a good hire from a fast one):

• Fabric estimating in metres, pattern repeat, railroaded versus up-the-roll fabrics, pile direction
• Fabric durability ratings (Martindale rub counts; Wyzenbeek double rubs on US-tested fabrics)
• Performance fabrics and vinyls: Crypton, Sunbrella, marine-grade vinyl, faux leather
• Leather: hide selection, measuring hides by area, grain matching, seam allowances
• Foam grades by density and firmness, and when a customer needs a firmer seat
• Fire safety requirements for the market you serve, such as the Furniture and Furnishings (Fire) (Safety) Regulations 1988 for domestic furniture and the standards written into contract and hospitality specifications. Say which ones your workshop worked to rather than claiming all of them.

Worth one line each if true: reading a spec sheet or an interior designer's brief, measuring up in a customer's home, quoting a job, and keeping a job ticket that a colleague can pick up.

There is no licence for upholstery in the UK. Nobody will ask for a card. That means your evidence has to come from somewhere else, and it comes from photographs.

• Formal training: college upholstery courses run across the UK, usually a few hundred guided hours covering frames, springs, sewing and foam. List the course, the hours and the year.
• Apprenticeship: time on a bench under an experienced upholsterer is the traditional route and still the most respected one. Put it under experience with the workshop, your years and what you were allowed to do alone by the end.
• Short courses and workshops count if you name them plainly: a week-long car trim course, a leather sewing class, a marine canvas workshop.
• Self-taught: say so and prove it. "30 chairs and two sofas rebuilt in a home workshop, portfolio of 18 finished pieces" is a real qualification in this trade.
• Useful certificates to add if you hold them: IOSH Working Safely, a forklift certificate, and a full UK driving licence if the job includes collections and home visits to quote.
• Some sectors carry their own material and paperwork rules. Aircraft interior work, for example, is done under the company's aviation approvals and its material approvals. If you have worked in one of these businesses, describe what you did and let the employer explain their own requirements.

Workshops hire beginners constantly, because stripping and prep work has to be done by somebody and good hands are hard to find. What they will not hire is a CV that says nothing. Here is what to put on it.

• Anything you have rebuilt, with a count. Chairs, dining seats, a campervan cushion set, motorbike seats, a boat bimini. Count them honestly.
• Sewing of any kind: industrial or domestic machine, canvas, sails, tents, awnings, garment work, leathercraft. Sewing transfers directly.
• Related hands-on work: cabinetmaking, carpentry, vehicle body repair, sail loft, tailoring, saddlery. Say which tools you already use.
• Physical realities of the job, stated plainly: standing all day, lifting a sofa with one other person, working with staples and pneumatic tools safely.
• Reliability evidence from any job: attendance, a shift record, keeping a bench tidy. Small workshops care about this more than large employers do.
• A line offering a working trial. Many owners hire off a paid day at the bench rather than an interview, and saying you are open to it removes a step.

• One page. Two only if you have 15 years and several distinct sectors, and even then most workshop owners will read the first half.
• Simple single column, clear headings, no photo of yourself, no date of birth and no graphics. Larger furniture manufacturers and hotel groups run applications through applicant tracking systems that read plain text.
• Order: name and contact with the portfolio link, two-line personal statement, experience, skills, training, certificates.
• Send a PDF named Firstname-Lastname-Upholsterer-CV.pdf. If you are walking into a workshop, bring a printed copy and a phone with the photos loaded and ready.
• Words to mirror from the job advert when they are true for you: strip-down, frame, webbing, coil springs, serpentine springs, foam, cushion, piping, buttoning, walking-foot, pattern, fabric estimating, contract, domestic, car trim, headlining.
• Keep it in plain trade language. "Hand-tied springs" says more to a workshop owner than a sentence about your commitment to quality.