The Upholstery Forum

I'm thinking that it would be a good idea to make a build thread for my seats project. I'm not a professional but after buying my dream car, I promised myself that I would do everything on it. After 3 years of restauration, it's mechanicaly sound. I now turn my head towards the interior. I've done a shift boot, a e-brake boot and recently mats. I have notions about sewing but never did upholstery before. I'm sure along the way I'll have questions that will emerge and I'm hoping to get answers from the experienced people on this forum...

So I recently bought a cheap/used walking foot. Learned about thread sizes and composition and also needles from this forum and videos. And I'm giving it a go! More to follow as I go. Cheers!

Here's the e-brake a shift boot.

Looks great, keep up the good work.

All very nice work, looks as good or better than factory! Looking forward to more posts on this -

Thanks to both of you. I'll keep this thread alive for sure as I'm sure I'm going to need insights and it's also nice to be validated when you do something for the first time. Cheers!

After this I'll be up to date. Basically these are the seats and I unsewed one cover to mock up the pattern. That took a long time, Recaro seats are pretty complex. Those seats are 30 years old and you can't get replacement bolsters for them. I'll have to fix a few things, that's what scares me the most in that project because if I mess up, it's game over. These seats are so rare, it took me 2 years to find them...

I made the pattern using cardboard because I'm planning on doing the bolsters in leather. I actually imported a nice upholstery leather hide from Italy. Believe it or not, it was cheaper than locally. It came rolled, it's pretty large 53 sqft actually. I'm going to try a Harris tweed for the inserts, I see this being used more and more in Europe for 90's cars restaurations. It's soft, not itchy, some are made for upholstery (rub resistant + extra thickness). Harris tweed is the only regulated fabric in the world and I imported it from Ireland. So that's the plan!

Over the weekend, I'll tackle the lower bolsters and see how it goes! More to follow...

Excellent looking patterns! Are you sure you've never done this before????

I'm a carpenter lol
I've done some sewing stuff before but ya, this is my first time doing upholstery. I look and analyze. I've watched a lot of videos, read a lot... Tons of useful info on here, John's videos etc...

That explains it, carpenters and machinists are all perfectionists. I'm an Engineer so my prefection is typically in my mind!

fibersport wrote: ↑Sun May 19, 2024 1:24 pm That explains it, carpenters and machinists are all perfectionists. I'm an Engineer so my prefection is typically in my mind!

OMG that's so funny! You may be right but you do have the better job ha ha. Joke apart, I always found it challenging to materialize the vision, the vision is always flawless.

I've been practicing the lower bolsters, today I'm going to go at it with the leather. I hope it turned out well. I'll report later, cheers!

Leather lower bolsters are done. Harder than it seems to do but I'm happy with the results. There's so much curves to deal with plus the thickness of the upholstery leather and the 1/4 scrim. And there's 4 to make! I used a 3/16" foot for the top stitching with Serabond 135.

OK, I continue to be impressed!

fibersport wrote: ↑Sun May 19, 2024 1:24 pm That explains it, carpenters and machinists are all perfectionists. I'm an Engineer so my prefection is typically in my mind!

As a machinist I kinda had to laugh a little at this. When I was redoing my boat (first project) I had once made a comment to my wife about trying to measure "accurately" When I really only need to hold wood workers tolerances.

Ya precision to the 1/16" is more than enough . I can only imagine how imprecise that is for a machinist

So a Carpenter, a Machinist and an Engineer walk into a bar ....... Sorry guys, I just had to toss that in!

fibersport wrote: ↑Tue May 21, 2024 3:12 am So a Carpenter, a Machinist and an Engineer walk into a bar ....... Sorry guys, I just had to toss that in!

And talked about upholstery projects
Cheers guys

Alright, I've done the bottom seat part. All went well and I really love the look of it. The leather mixed with the Tweed is right up my alley for my 90's euro sports car.
I've fixed the foam the same way I've learn watching videos on YouTube, super solid feeling.
My only small disappointment is that "J" trim I think it's called (the one in the picture) I could not find it anywhere and I had to reuse the same one.

And the final product...

OMG I'm rolling

And I've always said an 1/8" was a like a mile si I guess a 1/16 would be half a mile.

Honest to god I own tools that are accurate down to .0001 (not that I have to hold that) so trying to measure with a tape and get, well, weird

Sometimes I even feel like I'm being sloppy

fibersport wrote:So a Carpenter, a Machinist and an Engineer walk into a bar ....... Sorry guys, I just had to toss that in!

Would that be a Sin bar?

JF TüR wrote: ↑Tue May 21, 2024 11:54 pm And the final product...

That looks awesome