screen and workspace layout I have watched many Blender tutorials for various operations in Blender and they all seem to have lots of vertical tabs open that are customized for whatever they do most - see attached - but I can't find a tutorial on setting up these tabs or - for instance - where I can find the tissue dialog 

Thanks
The Tissue Tools are from the Tissue add-on. You can activate it in your preferences by ticking the checkbox (Edit > Preferences > Add-ons).



The sidebar can be toggled by pressing N, through View > Sidebar or by clicking on the little arrow icon.