Upholsterer Resume Example & Writing Guide

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

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

• What you can finish alone. Can you take a chair from strip-down to dust cover 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 shops. If you sew, name the machine and what you sew (welt, zippers, boxing, French seams, leather).
• Which side of the trade. Residential and antique, contract and hospitality, automotive and marine, 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 shop 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 hardworking; the numbers say it.

The problem with most upholstery resumes 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 shop 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, doweling, corner blocks, arm rail replacement
• Webbing (jute and elastic) with a webbing stretcher
• Eight-way hand-tied coil springs; sinuous (zigzag) spring installation and repair
• Burlap, edge roll, cotton and horsehair foundations on traditional pieces
• Foam cutting and shaping; Dacron and down wrapping
• Blind stitching, slip stitching, ladder stitch and hand buttoning
• Tufting, diamond tufting, channel backs, pleating
• Welt and double welt, skirts, kick pleats, cambric dust covers

Machines and tools:

• Industrial walking-foot sewing machine (Juki, Consew, Singer 111W class); serger 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 automotive seat covers)
• Foam saw, band knife or hot wire; button-covering machine
• Steamer and fabric shears; leather clicker press if the shop has one

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

• Yardage estimating, pattern repeat, railroaded versus up-the-roll goods, nap direction
• Fabric durability ratings (double rubs on the Wyzenbeek test; Martindale on European goods)
• Performance fabrics and vinyls: Crypton, Sunbrella, marine-grade vinyl, faux leather
• Leather: hide selection, square-foot measurement, grain matching, seam allowances
• Foam grades by density and firmness, and when a customer needs a firmer seat
• Flammability requirements for the market you serve, such as California TB 117-2013 for residential furniture and the standards written into contract and hospitality specifications. Say which ones your shop worked to rather than claiming all of them.

Worth one line each if true: reading a spec sheet or a designer's tear sheet, taking a customer's measurements in their home, quoting a job, and keeping a job ticket that a coworker can pick up.

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

• Formal training: technical college and vocational upholstery certificates exist in many states, usually a few hundred contact hours covering frames, springs, sewing and foam. List the program, 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 shop, 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 auto 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 shop, portfolio of 18 finished pieces" is a real qualification in this trade.
• Useful cards to add if you hold them: an OSHA 10-hour General Industry card, a forklift authorization, and a driver's license if the job includes pickups and in-home estimates.
• Some sectors carry their own material and paperwork rules. Aircraft interior work, for example, is done under the shop's certification and its material approvals. If you have worked in one of these shops, describe what you did and let the employer explain their own requirements.

Shops 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 resume that says nothing. Here is what to put on it.

• Anything you have rebuilt, with a count. Chairs, dining seats, a camper cushion set, motorcycle seats, a boat bimini. Count them honestly.
• Sewing of any kind: industrial or domestic machine, canvas, sails, tents, awnings, garment work, leather craft. Sewing transfers directly.
• Related hands-on work: cabinetmaking, carpentry, auto body, 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 shops 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 shop owners will read the first half.
• Simple single column, clear headings, no photo of yourself 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 summary, experience, skills, training, certifications.
• Send a PDF named Firstname-Lastname-Upholsterer-Resume.pdf. If you are walking into a shop, bring a printed copy and a phone with the photos loaded and ready.
• Words to mirror from the job posting when they are true for you: strip-down, frame, webbing, coil springs, sinuous springs, foam, cushion, welt, tufting, walking-foot, pattern, yardage, contract, residential, automotive trim, headliner.
• Keep it in plain trade language. "Eight-way hand-tied" says more to a shop owner than a sentence about your commitment to quality.