Another interior question, reupholstery?
Thread Starter
Junior Member
Joined: Jul 2006
Posts: 101
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From: Minnesota, United States
Another interior question, reupholstery?
I am thinking about reupholstering the seats and door panel fabric and center console top fabric in my car to a leather like material. Has anyone here done this? Can someone point me to a guide? What material would you recommend? Is Vinyl nice or does it look cheap compared to leather?
senile
Joined: Aug 2006
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Try http://www.leatherseats.com/ First for a price comparison and then you'll know. New leather seats at an uphostry shop will run in the neighborhood of $2-2.5k. Leathers a nice brag, but as cheap and thin as the leather is these days vinyl is a better choice especially it its going to sit out in the weather.....Jack
Your Powder Coater
Joined: Mar 2004
Posts: 4,463
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From: Girard, Ohio
my g/f just re-did her seats for her 94 coupe, they came out really nice, they were ugly tan, she did them with black material & embroidered a silver dragon onto each of them.. i'll tell her to get on here & post pix & possibly an explaination.
Jynx
Joined: Oct 2006
Posts: 12
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From: Girard, Ohio
sorry it took me a while to get you a response. i re-did my seats over last winter, and they are holding up really good. i just used a thicker dark fabric that could take some abuse. i wouldn't go with vinyl, because it will tear too easily. pleather could be a cheap substitute for leather, but i don't know how well it will handle cutting and sewing it.
as far as appolstering, after i got the seat cover off of the padding, i ripped the pieces apart, one at a time, with a seam ripper, and then wrote on the fabric where all the pieces match up. like A goes directly next to A, and i marked the order that i took the pieces off. next, i pinned the pieces to my fabric (so that i could still see the markings i made), and cut around them so that the new pieces were still pinned to the old ones. then i sewed the new pieces to the old, making the fabric doubly stronger. from there it's just a matter of matching the letters when your sewing it back together, in the reverse order that they were taken apart.
also, thick wire works just fine for replacing the metal rings that had to be removed when taking off the origonal cover.
a little bit of a pain, but well worth the results. i hope i could be of some help. if you have any questions, lemme know.
as far as appolstering, after i got the seat cover off of the padding, i ripped the pieces apart, one at a time, with a seam ripper, and then wrote on the fabric where all the pieces match up. like A goes directly next to A, and i marked the order that i took the pieces off. next, i pinned the pieces to my fabric (so that i could still see the markings i made), and cut around them so that the new pieces were still pinned to the old ones. then i sewed the new pieces to the old, making the fabric doubly stronger. from there it's just a matter of matching the letters when your sewing it back together, in the reverse order that they were taken apart.
also, thick wire works just fine for replacing the metal rings that had to be removed when taking off the origonal cover.
a little bit of a pain, but well worth the results. i hope i could be of some help. if you have any questions, lemme know.