Upholstery Continued (from RV-10 list)

[BigD]

Still a couple of flaps to trim, and make one for the back bottom, but essentially done:





==dave==

[BigD]

Warts, wrinkles and all:





I've decided to not glue the seat fabric to the foam, so you can't see the shape well - I'm guessing that with a bunch of hours of being used they'll look more contoured; there's more fiddling around to do with pulling things tight and straightening, but for now it's on to actual airplane contruction again...hope I remember how to rivet...

Still have carpets to do - I'll get those posted when done. The front seats used approx. 4 yards of vinyl - I did not try to maximize the material usage as I wanted the stretch to go across the seats, but even so I think it'd be tough to do it with less. Patterns saved for future reference.

==dave==

[BigD]

So now it's time to put a binding on the carpet, and I'm thinking what could be simpler? I start with the smallest pieces, the pax seat floors, and start having trouble with running off a straight line and the material not wanting to feed straight because of the compression of the carpet by the presser foot. This results in a slightly slack, poofy and not consistent edge. Now, I know it's just a floormat, and after it's been stepped on 57 times it'll be flat and no one is going to notice anyway, but I wanted to see if I could get a tighter edge.



I tried a few different things, like sewing with the carpet on top, using an edge guide, and pinning things down, none of which helped. The problem was the pinch of the seam and the expansion of the foam/carpet outboard of the initial stitching of the binding (in the red oval) - hard to compress that consistently when wrapping the binding around the edge and sewing to the back:



What worked for me was to stitch around the carpet about halfway to where the binding was going to be sewn down to pre-compress the carpet/foam (green oval). Now after sewing the binding on to the top I can get a nice, tight roll and fairly even edge.





I decided to use the black vinyl I had left over from patterning the seats - it looks OK and the binding tape I purchased with the carpet was too narrow (1 1/4 inches). I cut some 3 inch strips and that is way easier to work with, and I can always trim the bottom back closer to the seam - 2 inches would probably be plenty assuming a 1/2 inch bound edge. The carpet is from Airtex and comes with the foam backing - if I was using unbacked carpet then the pre-stitching might not be as helpful, depending on the pile.

[BigD]

Here's what the bound carpet looks like in the baggage area, without any of the finish panels in - so it looks like it's too small...



I decided to not try to bind the edges around the tie-down cutouts. The rings are removable - and will probably spend a lot of their time in a pouch behind the rear seat. If I planned to run the carpet up the side, like the sides of the tunnel, or maybe up a little ways in the baggage area, then I would use the binding tape on the back of the two pieces to create the 90 degree joint where the wall meets the floor, and the binding would be invisible but (hopefully) the carpet would appear to be continuous. For now, though, it's just for the floors.

==dave==

[Mike D]

Very inspiring Dave!!!

Did you make patterns? If so, how did you do it?

What was the most difficult part?

[BigD]

Not sure if you're talking about the carpet or the seats, but the answer is yes to both, and thanks for the nice comment. I started with paper (masking paper worked OK) and used that to sew up a 'test' cover. Then, seeing where adjustments were necessary (and in some cases starting over again) transferred the patterns to posterboard (easier to trace around). If I was going to just do one seat cover I wouldn't bother with the posterboard. The carpet was just a big sheet of paper trimmed to fit. For the seat fabric the pattern size also depends on how much and where your seam allowances are going to be. For example, I ended up cutting the top and bottom pieces the same size as the cushion, but adding a 1/2 inch seam allowance to the side pieces. When sewn together with 1/2 inch seam, the cover is pulled slightly into the cushion helping to fill things out. I'm pretty sure a more experienced upholsterer wouldn't bother with all those steps, particularly sewing a test pattern, but it helped me learn about measuring mistakes, angles, corners, where and how to trim etc. Plus the practice using the machine was worthwhile. Ultimately the actual sewing is the quickest and usually easiest part - kind of like riveting - just takes sitting down and doing it.

If you go back to the original thread in the RV-10 section, you can see some of the patterns in the background and how things evolved with experience: http://www.vansairforce.com/communit...d.php?t=113508


==dave==

[BigD]

Not completely RV related, other than I was curious about sewing actual car seats vs aircraft seats and cushions, so I decided I'd re-upholster my daughter's car seats while she was home for the holidays. And I used the same fabric. Now I'm wondering if using a car seat, like from a corvette or something with a sexy interior, or at least the underlying foam/shape, would be a way to get a totally custom interior, especially in an 8...would have to figure out how to incorporate the pink/blue/green confor-foam and attach the seat to the airplane. I found a pair of seats (for practice before tearing up the 'real' ones) in fair shape at the junkyard and they weren't that expensive. The seat bottoms came out pretty tight, the backs have a few wrinkles, so I'm not ready to call myself an upholsterer, but they're adequate and I learned a bunch.



==dave==