Make your own Interior furniture such as this cool footstool with amazing fabric and a little bit of help.

Where can I learn upholstery in essex?

I recently tried making an upholstered footstool in Essex, I had been wanting to try some sort of upholstery course for a while. The footstool is bang on trend and chic for todays interior design and a perfect project to ease you in to upholstery and interior design. Intrepid interiors are a wonderful shop in Southend Essex where you can try making a variety of handmade interior items. You can learn to up cycle old furniture upholster and even learn different paint techniques to give your furniture an new lease of life. Making an upholstered footstool in Essex with Intrepid Interiors was incredibly easy and so much fun. not only are you making something to take home and use you are learning a new skill.

Learning to how to make an upholstered footstool.

Learning how to make a footstool was really interesting and at Intrepid Interiors they take all of the hard work out of sourcing furniture and upholstery parts. They make you lunch tea and coffee and teach you in a friendly fun environment.

We turned up at the Intrepid interiors shop for our day of creativeness with a metre of fabric which we had sourced ourself. Of course the lovely Carla can help you find some equally lovely goodness too ( infact Carla ordered mine for me)  I loved the Emma Shipley fabric which I thought would suit my house perfectly. Emma shipley is an amazing designer who hand draws her designs. These feature all sort of exotic birds and animals it gives an amazing pop of colour.

Carla supplies all of the rest of the equipment for the footstool including the legs, base foam and backing. The class is set up with just 6 people so you have plenty of room and its nice an easy to ask lots of questions.

Building your footstool from scratch.

We started out in two groups, One group painting legs and one group going straight in with making the stool base. The MDF bas had been prepared with the drilled holes and leg screw bases in place. This was the only thing we didn’t do. We had to stick out foam upholstery pad to the base and then adhere the wadding over the top of that and trim to size.

The next step was positioning the fabric on the stool. We secured the fabric with a few staples so it is lined up and ready to go.

The staple gun was easy to use the hardest part was folding the fabric at the corners to get the perfect fold and making sure th fabric was not being pulled by the staples.

Painting the legs of the footstool with Annie Sloan Chalk paint.

Carla had a wide choice of paint to choose from including the Annie Sloan Chalk paint. I was fully prepared to paint my legs black but when I saw the array of colours I had try something different. I went for a gorgeous Annie Sloan teal chalk paint. Which I finished with a clear wax for a bit of natural shine.

Fixing the legs and tidying the base.

The last step was to fix our painted legs to the base of the stool. We neatly stapled black upholstery fabric under the stool folding in the edges before screwing in our stool legs. Voila A perfectly easy to make footstool!

Every single stool looked totally different! the options are endless. I can not wait to try making another one now that I know how.

Intrepid interiors courses.

The Intrepid interior upholstered footstool workshop runs from 10.30 until 4.30 and costs £185.

You can book a footstool making course direct via Intrepid Interiors. Check their website or Instagram page for more details. Secure your footstool upholstery class in Essex for a 50% deposit. All you need to bring is a metre of fabric, lunch is provided.

All I need to do now is work out where I love my stool best?

Thank you for reading my Making an upholstered footstool in Essex. Take a look here for more Essex craft classes in the area.

D x