oldManTan

is this like a hobby of yours? this is amazing! i wanna do this now but i don't have a sewing machine or anything and i doubt i'd be able to do it all with a straight needle. nice work though this is just plain awesome. i'm more of a 3D printing, fabbing stuff up with scrap stuff type of guy lol. i would really love seats like that though, can't wait to see the end result

t2d2

iTrader: (8)

Thanks! It's no more a hobby than everything else about this blessed/cursed SC. I figure there's bound to be a lot of people interested in how this turns out, given how plush these cars are but how awful most of the seat covers are at this point. I'm moderately handy with sewing, but I've never done anything remotely like this before. Definitely learning as I go.

I was just checking back in to add an update to the last photo, with the lines tidied up a bit and the 3-way intersection seams much more secure now. I'm debating moving on to connecting the white panel into the tan surround now, but I need to decide still if I'm going to replicate the OEM design of sewing the foam/fabric pads to the bottom of each panel (the stitching you can see along the edge of the panels on the stock covers) or just use fabric adhesive spray. I'm leaning toward the latter. In fact, that's the method used on some of the seat back pieces. It should work fine on the cushion.

oldManTan

whatever works man. post a video or like a mini DIY on the sewing part, i'm really interested in this

t2d2

iTrader: (8)

I barely have enough hands to hold all the leather folds in place and turn the wheel (since the foot pedal can't be used), let alone hold a camera! I'll take some pictures of the back side of the stock panels, which will help explain how it all goes together. It's quite a jigsaw puzzle.

I started out by going over all the seams with tiny scissors and separating out the panels enough to access the metal rods threaded along the seams through fabric sleeves, then pry the $#@*! hog rings off those rods. That part of the process seriously sucked. After that, I just took my time tracing out the old panel shapes on the new leather, keeping it as flat and stationary as possible ... not an easy task with how folded over the dried old leather is. As mentioned previously, I cut 1/8 or 1/4" outside the traced lines to give myself a little margin of error on the tracing.

The method I've been using to hold stuff in the desired shape is metal binder clips. You can see them tucked away in a few of the pics. Pins are not recommended for leather because it'll distress the thick material too much to keep everything lined up. This is my first time ever working with leather. It's a challenge, to say the least.

The leather needle has a cutting tip on it, which works quite well. Unfortunately, the sewing machine (middle of the road Brother) lacks the HP to push through all that material. I need to borrow a page from Top Gear and hook it up to the 1UZ... I got the heaviest duty thread that the fabric store carried, which is rated for upholstery but not leather specifically. It's pretty stout, but not quite as thick as the stock stuff. I'm double or triple stitching most everything, though, so it should be fine.

t2d2

iTrader: (8)

Final update for the night, almost negated by Comcast being down for the past 40 minutes. I went ahead and mostly attached the new cushion cover to the beige surround -- everything except for the tight spots in the back that I'll have to do by hand. I was pleasantly surprised by how well it all lined up as I worked my way around the curved edge from both directions.

Here are a few more pics detailing the process.

1) the foam base of the cushion, showing the grooves where the rods connect the cover to the foam core (with somewhat visible rods laced throughout it).

2) the back of the stock leather pieces, showing how they are curved and shaped like a Reeses wrapper, as well as the fabric sleeves (for the rods) that I clipped to their original spots for transferring over to the same spots on the new panels.

3) the foam pads that stick to the back of the leather cover and fill out the space between it and the foam base.

4) the back of my newly crafted leather cover; much softer curves than the old leather, which shows how challenging it is to pull everything into shape without some sort of a mold or jig.

5) the almost finished cushion! The final challenge will be getting in under the cover somehow to pull the rods together in the grooves and cinch it up to get rid of the scrunchiness. The two-tone scheme makes a lot more sense (IMO) now that the two colors are joined together smoothly.

t2d2

iTrader: (8)

It's alive! Well, resuscitated, at least. I still need to get some different needles to finish up a few corners I can't get at with my current supplies, but it's close enough that I went ahead and assembled it non-permanently to see how it'll all fit together.

I flipped the cover upside down, wedged the foam pads into their compartments, then dropped the foam base into place and pulled everything snug. It's just seating on the springs, not anchored down at all and no hog ring rods cinching the cover to the foam base. I may drive with it that way for a bit and see how things settle in. It's so stinkin' comfy, I may have to take up driving naked.

t2d2

iTrader: (8)

I started in on the back rest tonight and documented the steps a bit better along the way.

1) The panel layout with the new leather pieces. I went with the softer leather from the front of the couch for the two inset pieces, both because it makes sense as the main contact area and because I couldn't get a big enough panel for the larger of the two from the thicker leather on the back of the couch. A nice side benefit is I can sew through one thick and one soft layer easily, whereas two thick layers is too much for the sewing machine.

2) The new leather panels laid out as they'll be assembled.

3) All hands (clips) on deck! There's a reason why I did the cushion first... The back rest is a bit trickier to pull everything together.

4) An hour or so later, and it's mostly sewn up. Still trying to scrunch a few shapes together to round the corners properly, but that'll wait until tomorrow.

t2d2

iTrader: (8)

Making good progress today. I still need to go over the tight spots by hand (haven't gone back to the fabric store for additional supplies yet), but everything is together and made for a successful first test fit.

1) The new portion of the cover all sewn up, including the lower fabric piece that wraps around the lower bar in the back and is the main element of pulling it all snug vertically. We'll see if I end up regretting my choice of leather cuts for the smaller of the two main inset pieces. It came from an adjacent cut of the panel right below it, so I'm not sure why it looks so much grungier in the light. Maybe it was just the portion tucked under the fold of the couch's seat back and needs a good cleaning. At any rate, all the white will probably take on a uniform off-white in time.

2) Clipping the new cover to the old beige surround, similar to the process used on the seat cushion. This is a bit tricky, as its contoured to wrap around the seat. That means you aren't clamping a straight line; you'll have more material on one side than the other. When it comes time to sew it, flipping it inside out and keeping it curved the way it wants to will make it all work out. Getting to all the little spots around the base of the head rest is slow going.

3) I had to hold the head rest up to show the two-tone integration at its base, as I haven't put the springs in yet to secure the slider mechanism. I'll still be taking the cover out a few times and don't want to mess with that yet.

4) A semi-finished product! The seat back is looking a bit baggy there, due to none of the foam pads being in place yet and nothing pulled tight around the back.

It feels sooooooo nice to sit in. I think I need to go for a drive now.

There will be more to come as I finish up little details, but hopefully these 50 or so posts will either inspire some adventurous idiot to do likewise, or caution the wiser ones amongst us from tackling it themselves. At the very least, you can see what you're dealing with when it comes to seat upholstery and not feel like you're being taken to the, umm, cleaners when given a $750 per seat quote from the shop.

Biddles

iTrader: (2)

Impressive work man, keep it up.

t2d2

iTrader: (8)

Thanks. BTW, I counted 71 hog rings that I removed from the driver's seat, 70 of which were a PITA.

t2d2

iTrader: (8)

I picked up a leather needle for hand sewing the tight spaces today, so the corners are all cinched up now on the seat cushion and the fabric sleeves attached. Now for the huge challenge: figuring out how to reattach the rods to anchor the cover to the foam. I feel like the foam base was sprayed in around the rods and hog rings in the factory... There just doesn't seem to be any possible way to access any of those spaces, let alone all of them simultaneously. I'll definitely have to sleep on that. I'll be happy if I can simply attach one of the 2-3 anchor points per rod.

brandenGs3

iTrader: (3)

I have supra fronts and they are amazing. I redid my whole interior with leather on the outside and suede on the inside the grip is amazing and the heat is cut in half! best thing you can do to these cars. Installment took about 1day and having a staple gun made it a lot easier.

t2d2

iTrader: (8)

Why not just do all suede if you prefer the grip and cooler temp? Leather is all about the tactile feedback, and you're getting almost none of that with it being just along the edges.

Where/how did you use the staple gun? Maybe the Supra seats use a different method of securing the covers. There's nothing to staple to that I can see on the stock setup.

t2d2

iTrader: (8)

Fresh day, fresh mind, fresh start...

1) This is what the foam base of the seat cushion looks like with all its embedded rods and mounting points for the cover. The foam was damaged a bit around the rods while removing the hog rings, but probably not enough to be an issue.

I started with shorter zip ties but needed to go to a medium size to be able to reach in and loop them around the rods. The downside is, longer zip ties means thicker plastic to snip, and that's not an easy thing in such tight spaces. The first one broke my kitchen shears, in fact, and my smaller scissors were outmatched.

At this point, you need to: a) crawl inside the cover, and b) ask yourself, "do I love this car more than chocolate?" If the answer is "yes," proceed to #2. If the answer is "no," you've come too far, proceed anyway!

2) Welcome to hell. That's a really, really small gap to fit both arms in and try to get some light to see with. Basically, it's the height of the camera. That black tipped rod in the lower left corner went missing somewhere during the process of cinching down the zip ties, so I had to fashion a new one. There's another one like it on the right side and a perpendicular one along the back edge, all three of which extend down through the open slots in the foam and anchor to the seat frame below, as I recall.

3) Done! Next up is pulling the seat out of the car and reattaching the cushion.

t2d2

iTrader: (8)

I didn't get anything done on the seat over the holiday weekend, but I'm rolling on the seat back now. The corners are all cinched up, the fabric sleeves are sewn in, and finishing things up now by tacking the foam pads along all the seams. On the cushion, I just used fabric spray to stick them to the back of the leather. That worked fairly well on all but one that came loose while trying to fasten the zip ties.

On the seat back, there's no way that would be solid enough. It uses the foam pads in many cases as the anchor point for the rods, plus gravity would be working against the pads staying in place within each panel. I'm not super confident that I'll be able to get the rods locked down with zip ties like I did on the cushion, due to the seat back having much more limited access with how the head rest base attaches, but the rods at least give it the shape to follow the contour of the ridges within the foam base.

I'm glad I made my leather panels a bit bigger than the traced outilne. It's really coming in handy for the seat back, where the process is: sew the panels together, sew the fabric sleeves to the panels, sew the foam pads to the panels and the fabric sleeves. If you don't have that extra [leather] material, you run the risk of having the second and third steps of stitching being inside the original panel stitching line and the threads showing through from the outside of the cover.