ive been thinking of doing my thirdgen seats over in leather and i was wondering how hard is it to make the seat covers replacing the current ones not just throw it over he top of the old ones but i was wondering if anyone has done this or has one of those pattern things for sewing stuff i can give to my mother or girlfriend to sew up for me any help would be great thanks

 

many upholstery shops take what you have, seperate it at the seams, and use the originals as the pattern. It's not impossible, but not all that fun either. With a bit of patience anything can be done, and yes it's been done, i've done a couple things...as far as the headrests, haven't touched those so good luck, lol.

 

i was thinking about doing that myself but the problem is if i screw it up im pretty well fu(ked i want my original ones as a backup if my plans fail

 

well if your careful...the passenger side is identical for the most part to your driver...c'mon...your gurl can use the back seat if all else fails and your not out any inconvenience :-D haha

newayz, you can always have them sew the passenger side back together after all is said and done, and then you got your original skins back

 

if she wasnt so short i could just tell its a mod so she could have more leg room but the thing with sewing it back together is theyll never be the same so i think im gonna hunt down a jy seat for my experiments

 

true true, good luck, lol, gonna be a looong process, but well worth it once it's done. Good luck getting the right tention so that they are tight to the molding of the seat but not too tight.

 

I tried that on my 82 i was using 7 yards of free black leather that i got from a guy who does snowmobile seats but the lady wanted like $600 to do it and you need a sewing machine that can handle thick *** leather or material. so i asked my gf to try and she broke like 6 needles and she could barely move the stuff through the machine. and hand sewing is like... basically retarded unless you know how.

 

yea i did the hand thing to custom wrap something small...and yea, tried and broke about 3 needles, decided on hand sewing and that was the last time for anything like that, lol. one idea...cut out the templates from the doner cover...then take it to an upholstery shop...can't be more than $100 or $200 for them to sew it all together, but thats just if your mother and your gf give up on ya first obviously, lol.

 

Ya let them give it a shot first haha i would definatley get a jy seat cover though. good luck!

 

you need an industrial walking foot sewing machine such as Consew 206.by the way, head rest are really hard to do.

 

im really hopin this will work out for me i just need to find a jy seat for template them maybe make a cover out of cheap material just to check the fit if i go through with this ill post progress pics, for the molding part what if i used a heat gun on the leather wouldnt that help with the molding process?

 

I saw the process of doing these seats from cloth to leather. It's an extremly time consuming process and you need to know what your doing. He basically seperated every part of the original cloth seat covers. the measurements are very critical but then one thing you have to compensate for is how much the original foam has flattened out and make up for it so you have a tight fit.

Others are correct about industrial sewing machine it's a must for leather simple as that! the process for getting a skin tight fit is using some sort of a steam machine and NOT letting droplets of hot water get on the leather.

The cost of leather now makes any mistakes a costly one simple as that measure and measure again. A problem when you mess up is this it's hard to get another perfectly matching skin due to dying process there is always color variances from hide to hide so order more then you actually need by a little.

heres how mine came out.

 

Those machine's are JUNK in my opinion.I bought one new 6 month's ago and have had nothing but trouble out of it,sent it back after 3 week's and bought a Tacsew for $750 with the stand and motor,and had no problem's at all.