Tell me how you are liking the Sailrite. I looked and looked and could only find a couple in my budget. I was interested in that machine. it looks very nice and probably pretty user friendly??? Also tell how you did the pleats? Sew then fold over and sew again so its a blind pleat? Spill on you you did this. I assume you put the welting on the pleated part? Chefalo the Lucky Needle are awesome. But check out Homemadehardtop and Jakesbackyard here too. It sucks because they make it look easy and its not. Its a bitch to do it like they do but it looks so good when they are done. They have helped me a ton. They are on the Upholstery social forum and I read ever single thing they post trying to learn something. For me the tough thing is to see their stuff and then you say to yourself "I can do that" and when Im done it looks like a third grader tried it. But I do get better on each attempt.
@6inarow I really like the sailrite machine, I don’t have anything to compare it to but it is user friendly and they have great customer service if you have any questions. Yes I stitch the pleats first then attach the piping and next the white material. When I make the firewall piece I’ll put up a step by step on how I have been doing the pleats and attaching the 3 pieces together. I have seen their work and it is very impressive. I know that nothing I do on this will be perfect and the pros will be shaking their heads, but I’m having fun with it and slowly learning what not to do next time.
I'll be following this with great interest! After Lebarron Bonney shut down, ive been playing with the idea of trying it myself, (as well as hinting/ suggesting to my mother that she 'get back into using the sewing machine' when she retires in the next few months). For just doing a bench seat, I think I could figure out the templates, but I don't think I've ever actually used even a small household sewing machine in my life but would like to give it a go. Everythings looking great so far!
Your straight lines look perfect. Sewing straight lines is the hardest thing since commercial machines tend to run really fast. I've got and old Pfaff and I put a reduction pulley setup on it. My wife is a quilter and she made a quilted seat cover for a guy out of his old blue jeans. She was a little leary of running the heavy fabric through her high dollar Pfaff machine so she used my old commercial machine which will sew just about anything.
Just a simple trick. When sewing pleats, go up the roll. Going across the roll will produce wrinkles. I have seen people in this line of work who upholstered for 30 years not do this good of a job.
Oh man thank you @stanlow69 ! Another lesson learned. That’s driving me nuts on the door panel pieces. I couldn’t understand why some pleated panels looked tight and some had slight wrinkles. The way the gold material reflects definitely magnifies them also.
That looks good and thanks for sharing....I'd like to giver 'er a go sometime, too..... So clean you'll make people take their shoes off before they get in and wear little blue stretchy covers over their socks!
Great job Joe! You are an inspiration. I visited Joe a couple winters ago to pick up a model A chassis, he was building the coupe and the body was over here, the frame over there, the nailhead was in the bed of his truck. He put the whole thing together on his own. The fit and finish on this coupe is outstanding! He brought it up to New England Dragway for our Nostalgia day the summer and let me tell you, his car rips! He won the Camsnapper trophy for best hot rod to boot! Nice to see you have no boundaries Joe.
I am assuming the same thing for pleats on the seats? If not can they be shrunk out with a hair dryer? (guess what I think I did.....)
Subscribed! Looks good! My wife and I are taking a leap and going to open a shop. We have a good machine and a good amount of tools. We have done several cars and feel ready to start doing work for others. Over the years we have turned down plenty of work because we didn’t feel confident enough to work on other people’s cars. Sent from my iPhone using H.A.M.B.
Only if you are able to stretch the material. It will not shrink like cloth does. You can buy a cheap steamer at Bed Bath and Beyond.
Ok here is the firewall piece made up. I meant to take pictures of each step but sometimes I just get going and it slips my mind. First up made the panel and laid out the design I was looking for. They are 1.5” pleats nice and simple, gold on top white on bottom. This shows using clear material to trace the panel, it’s great for making templates. The bottom laid out with 1/2” added where you sew the piping and gold piece to. I leave about 1.5” extra all around to wrap the panel. Here is how much you need extra with doing a top stitch and then folding it to make the pleats. For a 1.5” pleat using this method with 1/2” foam, I mark the lines at 2.25” and the ends 2.5”. Unfortunately that’s the last picture I took so here’s the finished firewall piece resting in place.
After finishing up the firewall piece I decided to move onto the trunk as I didn’t really feel confident enough to do the seat cover or headliner yet. Started off by making some aluminum angle pieces that attach to the edges of the fuel tank. These allow me to attach the side and front panels with the same spring clips as the door panels etc. You can see those chrome magnets on the top of the tank that @Mikel50 turned me on to, they work great for holding templates as you trace things. Made up an aluminum cover for the battery box and got all the panels made up and attached yesterday. Just need to figure out what type of design I should do on these.
if I had that car id paint it yellow and change my name to milner !! very cool the way you did the trans cover .ive never seen it done before . I will copy it and say I thought of it !! best form of flattery
Solid work! If you hadn’t told us otherwise, I would have assumed that you have been doing upholstery for a long time...
I am so envious! I'd love to have real upholstery in my coupe. Your finished product looks mighty nice to me.
YouTube videos, lots of YouTube videos and just go for it. It’s far from perfect, but I’m learning as I go so it’s all good.
As with everything else joe does ... knocking it out of the park. Very hardworking guy. His car is proof of that. well done my friend. cant wait to see the finished product in person.
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