The Upholstery Forum

What is this material know as?
it is for an armrest. Unable to source an OEM replacement, and it does not appear to be in the aftermarket, so I need to make one.

Looks like black vinyl with some foam on the back. You should be able to find something close at an upholstery supplier and then back it with foam.

Doesn't Albright's have some foam backed vinyl??

We do, but the foam backing is 1/4" thick. Probably too thick for what he needs! :)

FWIW - The foam-backed vinyl is often referred to as headliner material. You can also get the same result by adding a 1/4" sew foam backing to regular vinyl fabric.

Thanks. Yes it does look like headliner material, but I have only see headliner material was a cloth faced, have not seen it with a vinyl face.

IIRC, the Sailrite website has some Morbern brand material that is a vinyl headliner (Seabrook) also available as upholstery fabric (ie. without foam backing).. I asked them if there was any difference between the two in the vinyl itself and they replied that they were the same.

Could you use the thinner headliner material to back your black vinyl?

find some 1/8" foam, it's out there.

I stopped by my local foam guy. He stopped carrying the sew foam, but can make me 1/8" from HR. Since the foam pad in the arm rest was also missing, I decided to replace the foam for the pad and the foam backing with a single piece of foam. The finish result looks the same to me, however, my installation needs improvement as I did not keep the seam as straight as it should be when I was installing it.

@JimmieJoe ,

You can use felt too next time and your tension is off on that machine.

@JimmieJoe , are you in florida?

Are you referring to the construction stitch or the top stitch?
I am in California.

@JimmieJoe , Tops stitch Jimmie.

I used my twin needle for the top stitch on this. I am having some issues getting the twin needle balanced out. Currently I am having to run the top tension at max and I have actually removed the screw from the bobbin, so something is not right on it. I did find that one of the bobbin springs was bend which was causing the tension between them to be significantly different. On my single needle I found that the tension problem was being caused by grooves in the thread guides which I corrected and it is now working very nicely, but I am still looking for the source on the twin needle.

@JimmieJoe , looks to me like you should top stitch with the single needle. What are the machines you have? Do you know the years of them?

I have the following:
Nelco N-250-B-3
White 970
Hand cranked Chinese Shoe Patcher model unknown but works well for things where I can not bring the work to the other machine I can take it to the work.
Singer 95-10
Brother LT2-B831-3
Singer 111w155

Only the White would be considered new or current.
All the other are old or of old design.

I have both of the Singers working well now, but they did not when I got them, I have not spent enough time on the Brother yet.

The Singer 111w155 is what I used in the in the other topic showing my practice work.

@JimmieJoe I have the exact same Singer 111w but mine is a 156. It is busy working the toughest project old school high density 1/2 foam and the stitch length is at its max and this is the result. It is the only machine you need to use.

@JimmieJoe

@JimmieJoe ,


Same machine Jimmie this one made in West Germany it is old.