1954 Chevy Pickup | Upholstery Shop: New Seats

January 20th, 2009: New Seats for the Truck - Part 4

Today I made and attached the side panels for the seat backs. These panels are for the actual left and right sides of the seat backs. I started by cutting and gluing sew foam and leather pieces, sewing them to what I had done previously and adding French seams, as I showed you in my previous post.

These are beginning to look like seat backs!

January 23rd: I've been thinking a lot about the difficulty involved in installing this cover for the seat-back ... it may be a simple task for a professional who's use to doing this stuff, but for a first-timer, this is no easy feat! After the entire cover is assembled, it has 5 sides ... like a bag; a top and four sides. To place this onto the frame of the seat-back, you have to turn it inside out and then, starting at the top, begin turning it back to its right-side as you work it down -- with 3-4 ounce leather which has half-inch sew foam backing and French seams, this is no easy task! But ... if that wasn't enough ... there's this pull-rod to deal with, which is sewn to the inside of the center panel (at shoulder blade height) and needs to be hog-ringed to the seat frame.

Well ... to make a long story short, I'm a lazy guy. LOL! And dealing with all this muscling of the leather had me concerned. Further, aside from all the struggle involved, I was worrying about adding a lot of creases to the buffalo hide and possibly messing up its beautiful grain patterns in the process.

Then, today I had a brainstorm. I decided to make the rear panel so that it opens ... and (!) I can close it up with buttons and continue the "button theme" I started when I made my shifter boot.

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[New Seats: Part 5 • Click Here]