Sewing seat covers

[rbgosling]

I’m considering fixing my seats as an activity at the Restoration Show in March - not only are they worn and stained, but the drivers seat now has a 2 inch hole.

I have a part-leather interior - fabric on the front of the sears, the rest leather. The concept is to remove the covers, separate the fabric panels, use those as a pattern to cut some new fabric, then re-stitch to the old leather.

Has anyone done something similar? Can a normal sewing machine cope with sewing seat fabric to this leather? Failing that I (or rather my lovely wife Heather, whose sewing skills are considerable) will need some sort of beefier sewing machine, or to hand-stitch it.

Any other advice or suggestions? I have practice removing the covers, after a broken frame required a shift of my cover and foam to a used seat from Lotusbits a couple of years back.

[amarshall]

One question - how much power does a sewing machine require, and who's going to pay for it? For reference - a 1kw supply for 3 days costs IRO £250.

[rbgosling]

Good question. Didn’t realise this would be an issue - don’t we normally have a power supply for the projector anyway? Is that insufficient for a sewing machine? Is the power supplied by NEC, and they charge for it, or is that cost for us to have our own supply of some sort?

Of course if its going to cost that much extra it doesn’t really make sense to do that at the show.

I recall in ‘17 we had the Jowett club next to us, and they were doing some seat sewing, that woman had a special sewing machine for the job.

[Grant H]

You just need to change the needle type in a domestic machine and maybe get a Teflon or roller foot if it's thick leather. I recommend a hand cranked Singer from the 50's, you won't need to plug it in.