If you’ve been following along, you already know: my upholstery workshops don’t stay open for long. This year, all seven filled up on day one of registration — again. It’s humbling every single time, and I don’t take it for granted.
So as we close out 2026, I wanted to do something I don’t do often enough: stop and recap the year in upholstery workshops. Partly because it was a good one. And partly because if you’ve been sitting on the sidelines waiting for a workshop seat to open up, I want to show you exactly what you’re waiting for — and what you can start today while you wait.
2026 Upholstery Workshops: The Year in Review
Seven hands-on events in 2026:
- Five upholstery workshops — hands-on frames, springs, webbing, padding, and fabric, start to finish
- One lampshade workshop — drum shades and gathered or soft tailored shades, built from scratch
- One slipcover workshop — fitting fabric to furniture like a second skin
Every single one capped at 6 students. That’s not a marketing number — it’s a promise. Six is the most people I like to teach in one room, so I can get to every single one of them at every step, and nobody’s stuck staring at a stapler wondering what they did wrong. That’s the whole point of hands-on: you get me!
Here’s proof it works, straight from this year’s students.
Student Spotlight: Gayle Nails Her Slipcover
Gayle’s no stranger to our workshops — she’s been back for several upholstery classes over the years. This time, she came to conquer something new: slipcovers. She’d taken a slipcover class elsewhere before and walked away without the instruction she needed to actually feel confident. So she gave it another shot with us.
At our workshop in Flowery Branch, GA, Gayle slipcovered a Parsons chair from scratch, adding a tailored skirt with contrast banding — the kind of detail that separates “homemade” from “handmade.” The result speaks for itself.
Student Spotlight: Emily’s First-Ever Chair
Emily walked into our upholstery workshop at Sanborn Mills Farm having never upholstered a single thing. First project, first class, striped fabric and all.
Partway through, she hit a snag a lot of first-timers run into: she didn’t have quite enough fabric to finish the chair the way she’d planned. Instead of it becoming a problem, it became a lesson — we worked out a solution together on the spot, and the striped panels ended up giving the chair even more personality than the original plan would have. Emily walked away with a finished chair and a first-hand lesson in the kind of on-the-fly problem-solving that separates “I followed a video” from “I actually learned to upholster.”
Student Spotlight: Kim’s Tribute Wingback
Some projects carry more weight than fabric and foam. At our Ashfield, MA workshop, Kim brought in a wingback chair her sister had started years ago, in a class the two of them took together. Her sister passed before it was finished — so this year, Kim came back to finish it herself.
She did her sister proud.
19 Years in the Making
None of this happened overnight. I started teaching hands-on back around 2007 — not in a studio, but doing demonstrations for local groups at libraries and our Massachusetts WCAA meetings. From there I started presenting at conferences. Eventually that turned into hosting my own upholstery workshops. Almost two decades later, I still get the same thrill watching someone turn a tired, sad chair into something they’re proud to sit in — or finish a project that means a lot more than fabric and foam.
That journey is also why my workshops sell out the way they do. Word travels. People come back, like Gayle. And every year, more people find out about them a little too late.
Here’s the Thing About “Too Late”
I get it — missing out on a seat feels like missing out, period. But here’s what I want you to know: the online membership doesn’t have a waitlist.
Everything I teach in my upholstery workshops — the same techniques, the same “why” behind every step, not just the “how” — lives in the membership library too. Chair tutorials, cushions, lampshades, slipcovers, all of it, plus weekly live chats where you can ask me questions directly. It’s how thousands of students have learned to upholster without ever leaving their garage, and it’s the same foundation I’ve built close to 12 million YouTube views on.
So if you missed registration this year, don’t just set a calendar reminder for next time. Get in the membership now. Learn the fundamentals. Get your questions answered live. And when the next round of upholstery workshops opens for registration, you’ll walk in already knowing your webbing from your welt cord — ready to get the absolute most out of your one-on-one time with me. Maybe you’ll even come back for a second (or third) workshop, like Gayle.
Want First Access Next Time?
Every seat in this year’s upholstery workshops went to someone who saw the registration link first — and that almost always means they were on my email list. If you’re not on it yet, that’s the single easiest way to make sure you’re not refreshing a sold-out page next year.
