Imperial Journey

With the seat backs done next up was the arm rest. You know the drill by now: take the old cover off, take the old cover apart, use the pieces of the old cover to make templates, cut out new pieces, sew them together, and re-install.

Like the rest of the seat, the after market cover was installed over the factory cover, allowing me to use the original factory cover to make the templates.

The biggest surprise was that the arm rest was nothing but a chunk of plywood and a big block of foam. For some reason I had assumed that it was a plywood box with foam padding on the sides.

In this picture you see the new cover, which is made inside out and then turned outside out when installed. You can also see that the foam block is covered with cheese cloth – this makes it much easier to install the tight fitting cover over the grabby foam.

With the new cover installed the arm rest doesn’t look half bad. Maybe I’m actually making progress!

The test cover was just that – a test. The actual vinyl is different – heavier and harder to stretch. And the test cover could have been a fluke.

One way to find out – stop stalling and make a real seat cover! Drag out the production vinyl, arrange the templates, find the marking tools and scissors, grab a cup of coffee, and start making things real. Or making real mistakes; time will tell…

The first step was to make the pleated insert. Sharp eyes will notice something wrong with the inserts – they have square corners. I really wanted the rounded corners, but ultimately decided that my skill level just isn’t there. Yet.

Even using the square corners I still cheated. Recall that the panel shrinks when sewing padded pleats. I compensated for this but the insert was still a tiny bit off in size. Since the insert isn’t full width it requires additional panels on each side. I cut these panels over size, sewed them to the insert, and then used the template to cut the entire panel to the exact finish size.

Once the center panel with pleats was done all that was left was to cut out and sew the rest of the seat back. Which may have been a slightly larger job than this sentence suggests…

In any case it was finally done. It took a bit of time and brute force to fit the finished cover over the seat back and line up the corners, edges and seams. I had to take the cover off, move it a tiny bit, and fit it again. Several times. But things finally looked halfway decent. Take a deep breath, flip it over, and start securing the cover to the frame with hog rings.

This is really the critical stage. This is when you stretch, pull, and tweak the cover so that everything lines up and there are no wrinkles. Hopefully. I tackle this job by working on opposite edges (top and bottom together then left and right sides together) going from the inside out and repeatedly checking for fit.

With the last hog ring installed it was time to flip it over and (hopefully) admire my work.

The verdict? Not too bad! Not perfect, but good. I know where every little issue and flaw is, but no one else will notice. I’m happy with it for a first attempt.

I got focused and didn’t get pictures of the build process, so here is the final result:

Time to bring all of the pieces together, make a complete seat cover out of junk vinyl, and see if it actually fits. No, I’m not concerned at all. Nope, nope, nope…

Step one: cut out all of the pieces:

Step two: sew it together:

Step three: install it:

It actually fits! Still some improvements needed in my technique, but it looks like it is time to make a real seat cover!

The old style seat covers in the Imperial wrap around the back of the seat frame and are secured to the frame with hog rings. The factory sewed cloth extension onto the sides of the seat for this attachment, which made sense when the seats were made of leather. See the gray cloth in the pictures below.

For me, however, this means multiple extra pieces that must be layed out, cut, and sewn together. Since I’m doing everything from scratch, it makes sense to just extend the existing side panels to directly incorporate the attachment points. “All” that this requires is combining two existing pieces into a single new piece. Easy, right???

Fortunately the layout was fairly straightforward. It required considerable thought on how to deal with the seam allowance when the two pieces were combined. Further, all of the edges that attach to the frame were reinforced with piping to improve resistance to the hog rings tearing out, so a piping allowance had to be included.

And, of course, based on my experience I had to double and triple check that I wasn’t combining the pieces upside down, backwards, or on the wrong side of the part, including the wrong seam allowance, or measuring from the wrong datum.

After considerable tracing, cogitation, measuring, drawing, and cutting I had three cardboard patterns for each piece:

1. The pattern of actual final net shape of the piece. This is used for fitting, checking, and for tracing the seam allowance lines onto the vinyl.
2. The pattern for the new piece with seam and attachment allowances added. These were clearly labeled with what other piece attached to each edge and where piping was to be sewn in.
3. The old pattern with seam allowances which did not include the attachment points. I don’t think I will need these again, but I will keep them just in case. These patterns had OLD written on them in several places.

Time to cut all of the new parts out of the junk vinyl, sew them together, and see if they fit the seat!

Having achieved an almost acceptable test panel with the junk vinyl, I decided to make one last test panel. This last test panel would use the actual vinyl I will be using for the seats. I also needed to change thread from the cheap Amazon thread I’ve been working with to the good thread for the actual seats. And this is probably a good time to change the needle.

The first step was to fill up several bobbins with the good thread and swap in the new bobbin. Then thread the good thread through the machine, using the old thread to pull it through to make sure that the machine was threaded properly. Next, change out the needle. Finally, make a quick test seam to verify everything, and start working on the final test panel.

The result was immediate disaster. Seams completely open on the back. Seams with the stitches very loose on the back. Not Good! Time to start troubleshooting.

Hmm, it looks like I installed the needle backward. OK, rotate the needle to the correct position and try again. This time I’m getting stitches, but they are very loose. That looks like the tension setting needs to be adjusted. Spend the next hour or so changing the tension adjustment to both tighter and looser with very little change.

With frustration rising it was time to walk away. Well, it was lunchtime. Grab a sandwich, fire up the Internet, and start researching the problem.

With a list of things to check, head back to the machine and return to pounding my head against a brick wall. After chasing several more dead ends, I started studying the threading of the machine. I knew this was good, since I hadn’t changed anything and had used the old (working) thread to pull the new thread through the machine.

Just a minute – something doesn’t look right here… In fact, if you look at it closely… It looks like the thread has jumped off of both of the tensioner disks. KRUD.

Pull out the user manual, study the section on threading the machine a dozen times, and thread it according to the instructions.

Grab another scrap of vinyl and run a test seam. MUCH better, but not perfect. OK, start adjusting the tensioner. This time it makes a noticeable difference. After a half dozen seams the machine is dialed in nicely.

Take a scrap of the seat vinyl, which is much heavier than the test vinyl, and run a test seam. Good, but not quite perfect. A few small adjustments of the thread tensioner and it is sewing perfectly with the seat vinyl.

Yup, as usual, the one thing that you know can’t be the problem is what bites you. Yes, further confirmation that I’m an idiot.

Now, I can finally cut out the pieces for the test panel using the actual seat vinyl and sew them together.This heavier material has a different feel, but I was able to achieve a successful result.

This panel is actually better than it looks in the picture – as soon as it is stretched all of the wrinkles disappear. After a roller coaster day I think I’m ready to start working on an actual seat.

With the main seat insert largely under control it was time to deal with the next challenge – corners!

“But”, I hear you say, “haven’t you already handled corners in multiple places?” Yes – flat corners. These are three dimensional corners where the top, front, and side of the seat meet. Further, they are curved. The corners of the seat are rounded. Rounded side to side and front to back.

This complexity is the main reason I’m trying to use the original seat covering as a template for the new seat covers.

But before that it made sense to start with s simple corner.

After achieving reasonable success with this simple corner I ratcheted my courage up a couple of levels and cut out corner pieces for one of the seat corners using the seat templates. These were partial pieces – I just used eight inches or so from each piece rather than the full two foot long piece. This is the piece on the right in the picture above.

I then fit the corner together with staples. This fitting process was an exercise in frustration. I re-did it several times until it seemed close. With trepidation I took it to the sewing machine and stitched it up. Sewing seams that curve in three dimension out of heavy vinyl seems to be an acquired skill. The piece is fighting you all the way – it really wants to go off track, bunch up (creating wrinkles), and in general just be difficult. But I finally reached the end of each seam.

The final result was, indeed, a corner. And it did fit over the corner of the seat. But it still needs work. I need to take the lessons learned and do at least one more test piece.

The Imperial had been re-upholstered at some point. While the upholstery fit fairly well it was made with non-Imperial quality materials. To be frank, it was ugly! Not to mention worn, dirty, and tearing in several places. There are springs poking through the rear seat and the drivers seat is sagging and uncomfortable.

The first step in re-doing the back seat was to take off these seat covers. Where I found that the covers were installed over the original seats. Good news, as I should be able to use the original factory covers to make templates and do a better job of fitting the new covers.

The factory material was in amazingly good shape. If all of the seats were like this all that would be needed is a good cleaning!

Of course not all of the seats will be like this. But it gives me a good starting point.

Interestingly, the seats have a significantly deeper yellow tinge than the side trim. They are a richer gold color than shows in this picture, while the leather side trim is close to the door cards. I still think that the new color choice is good – we will find out for sure when the new seats are installed

The next step is to remove the factory seat covers and separate them into their component parts. These are in good enough shape that I will use them to make templates for the new seat covers.

I have never done anything with a sewing machine. I have to learn everything from scratch. Using a technique known as a cannonball dive into the deep end of the pool.To summarize the early results, I suck at sewing.

Exactly as expected. At least for this stage in the game.

There are some essential tricks to starting stitches on a sewing machine – basically you have to hold the two threads (spool and bobbin) when starting a seam. If you don’t know these tricks life gets ugly immediately. Fortunately She Who Must Be Obeyed was kind enough to show me these tricks and I quickly mastered sewing seams in scraps of the junk vinyl.

Next was sewing straight and curved seams. My straight seams were curved and my curved seams didn’t follow the line. Again, as expected.

I cut out some squares of vinyl and drew a checkerboard of horizontal and vertical lines at one inch spacing. I also drew rounded corners between the lines. I then proceeded to sew along the straight and curved lines. As if by magic, the more times I did this the better the results were!

After a few days of practice I was doing reasonably well with the most basic of basics: operating the machine and following a line with a seam. I also had a sore back and a stiff neck from crouching over, concentrating intensely, and exercising fine motor control of both me and the machine for several hours. Time to move to the next set of skills!

I have a design in mind for the seat covers. I want an insert with vertical padded pleats in the middle of each seat, surrounded by a flat border. The pleated insert will be made of perforated vinyl and the border of solid vinyl. I also want the corners of the insert to be rounded, not square.

The padded pleats are made by sewing the vinyl to 1/2″ thick sew foam. This is a thicker version of the 1/4″ sew foam that I previously used on the door trim. The result is that the foam and vinyl are squished together along the seam and expand to the full 1/2″ thickness between the seams giving the padded effect.

Sewing something over 1/2″ thick requires practice. Which means cutting out practice squares of vinyl and sew foam, drawing pleat lines and curves on them, gluing them together (so the vinyl and foam don’t shift), and sewing them together.

Once again, I suck at sewing. Once again, practice leads to improvement. Once again, I had a sore back and a stiff neck from crouching over, concentrating intensely, and exercising fine motor control of both me and the machine for several hours.

One of the challenges with padded pleats is that the distance between seams shrinks compared to flat material – the material has to go up and down as well as across. In this case the shrinkage is 1/16″ per seam. In other words, if you want the final insert to be made of 2″ pleats, each pleat on the pattern has to be 2-1/16″ wide. Not a big deal as long as you know about it and include the compensation when laying out the pattern.

Time to put all the pieces together and do a complete seat panel. This is a three step process: first, sketch out the design for the panel showing all of the pieces and dimensions. Second, lay out each piece to exact size on a sheet of posterboard and cut them out. Then take each of these pieces and add 1/2″ all around them for a seam allowance. For the padded insert, add the 1/16″ compensation for each pleat and then add the 1/2″ seam allowance around the edges. Make a set of posterboard patterns with the seam allowance.

Third, take the pattern pieces with seam allowance and place them on the vinyl material. Arrange them to minimize the amount of vinyl wasted when you cut them out. Trace around the pattern pieces. Place the actual size pattern pieces inside each piece and trace around it – this gives you the seam lines that you will sew along. Then cut out each piece and sew them together. Sounds simple enough…

Now to exercise everything at once: Start by sewing the pleats to the insert. If the border is multi-piece, sew these pieces together. Then sew the border to the insert.

Once again, I suck at sewing. Once again, practice leads to improvement. Once again, I had a sore back and a stiff neck from crouching over, concentrating intensely, and exercising fine motor control of both me and the machine for several hours.

The result was several panels that steadily improved:

Ending up with a test panel that incorporates everything I plan to include in the actual panels. While there is still room for improvement in my technique, this one isn’t completely bad. I’m beginning to think that I might actually be able to pull this off!

Since the test panel in junk vinyl turned out OK it made sense to create another test panel using the good vinyl.

Not too bad. This is basically the image I had in mind when I started. The colors are fine. It wouldn’t hurt if the insert were a slightly darker shade of brown, but these colors work well. It is interesting experiencing the differences working with the thin, stiff junk vinyl vs. the heavy and supple production vinyl.

I think I’ve learned enough to start working on the actual seat cover. Of course starting with the junk vinyl and going through the learning curve of working with a complete 3D cover, not just a “simple” flat panel.

While sewing is needed for the seats and door panels there are a couple of trim pieces that don’t require sewing – I can start with those. The back seat has a trim panel that goes between the seat and the side of the car. These will be a great place to start.

These trim panels were not installed. I found parts of these panels in the trunk of the car. They were in terrible shape – worn, dirty, water damaged, and torn in half. Complete replacement was required!

Time for some CAD – cardboard aided design. A cardboard template was trimmed and adjusted until it fit the space.

Once the cardboard template was fitted the outline was traced onto a piece of 1/8″ hardboard and cut out.

The next step was to cover it with 1/4″ fabric backed foam and some of the JoAnn test vinyl, stretch the vinyl, and staple to the back. The result was OK, but had some wrinkles and was a bit thick. But it did fit properly.

Since I now had the real fabric I started on the actual panel. Once again, a piece of 1/8″ hardboard was cut out. This time I applied spray adhesive to the hardboard and a piece of 1/4″ fabric backed foam and secured the foam to the hardboard. I then trimmed the form to the hardboard so that the foam didn’t wrap around the edge.

The next step was to cut out a piece of the real vinyl – SoftSeat Light Cashmere – about 3/4″ larger than the template. Spray adhesive on the foam and vinyl, carefully position the vinyl, and apply the vinyl to the foam. After it was in the right position I rolled the vinyl to the foam to secure it in place.

I then flipped the panel over and started notching the vinyl close to the edge – but not so close that the cuts would show from the front or side. Starting from the middle of an edge the vinyl was carefully stretched over the back and stapled in place.

The end result was this complex shape with no wrinkles in the vinyl and good definition along the edges. I’m rather proud of the result! With the first piece a success, the second trim panel was made and installed.

If only the rest of the interior could go this smoothly! I rate the chances of that happening as somewhere between zero and zero, but I’m an optimist…