I have part-leather part-cloth seats. The plan is to replace only the cloth bits, and re-use the existing leather - it's the cloth that is torn, and shows the most staining and wear. I hope to get the leather clean(er) and use something to bring back the colour where it has started to crack.
The original mottled grey woven cloth is long since unavailable (AFAIK), so I was never going to achieve something that looked like the original. I opted for a much darker grey, almost-black, that will contrast with the light grey leather rather than trying to match it. The dash has dark grey leather around the instruments with the rest in light grey, so it does at least mirror that contrast. Also, hopefully, won't show up grease stains!
After a discussion here I reckoned I needed just under 5m of fabric for all the seats (ignoring cloth inlays in the doors and rear side panels), so I ordered 6m to be on the safe side. I ordered from Martrim, they seemed to have a wide selection and affordable prices, and chose the Charcoal Merlin. All the cloth has a thin foam backing to it; I actually liked the Light Grey Heavyweight, but it came with much thicker foam that my seamstress/wife Heather reckoned would not work, at least not with her sewing machine, and would make it tricky to fit the seats back in place too. The standard thickness nylon with foam backing is about the same thickness as the original cloth, so no problem there.
First job - rear seat base. Because it's simple so good for practice, there's two of them so we can strip one and use the other for reference, and because it's in the back (and usually has a car seat on top of it) so if it's less than perfect it's not so noticeable! One evening's work to strip the old fabric off. It seems that the fabric was probably glued to the foam once, but the glue has long since given up, except where the stitching is, where it is doing its best to hold on with determination. Nothing we can't overcome!
. Looking forward to seeing the results.
