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[ajnegus]

Firstly please forgive the imperfections in my work, I am a complete novice and have just started to learn about trimming so I realise that my work is not great at the moment.

I'm experimenting with making a side bolster cover on a Recaro seat, these bolsters are quite large and there are big curves to deal with. I am just using some upholstery fabric to practise on at the moment and am using a heavy duty domestic sewing machine which I know is not ideal for this kind of thing but its proving to be useful to learn on despite its limitations. It will cope with a couple of layers of scrim foam backed fabric but multiple layers of vinyl are an issue so at the moment I am limited to using just the fabric. As you can see in the photo, I have made a bolster cover and it turned out ok, I know that the curve is not entirely smooth but this is due to the sewing machine being too fast and not being able to see the needle clearly which makes following lines very difficult and ends up with a series of straight lines rather than a smooth curve. Obviously not all of my issues are relating to the sewing machine, I still have a lot to learn, but I hope that a proper industrial machine that can sew slowly will help to produce better results. At the moment I am reluctant to invest in one until I am sure I am capable of producing acceptable results.

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The main issue I am having is how to top stitch the French seam and I am finding difficulty in doing this. Hopefully the pictures illustrate my problem but in order to feed the material through the sewing machine it needs to be held in such a way as to form the fabric into a deep bowl shape to ensure that the part being stitched is flat. As a result it is very difficult to see what you're doing and to manoevre everything, and to get a decent stitch line to follow the seam, its very much like trying to sew in a tunnel. As you can see in the first photo, the top stitch is not exactly even and is probably too far from the seam, some of it is due to my sewing machine and not having a proper walking foot making it difficult to keep the stitching at an even distance from the seam, but I wonder if there is a problem with the way I'm trying to do this. Is there a technique I am missing or is it just a case of working slowly and ensuring alignment is checked every few stitches etc, or would I need a post bed type sewing machine in order to achieve this properly?

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Any assistance or tips would be much appreciated

[IvanD]

You already answered partially: You need proper walking foot machine.

Then you can get guide foot for it to help with alignment.

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This piece is not hard to sew. Not easiest but much easier then headrests for example. Key is to let machine pull material. When it's crumbled like this you tend to pull and it messes with stitch length.

[Cody]

That for that @IvanD shows will help a lot. And a walking foot machine with a servo or pulley would help too. But the biggest thing. Practice. I tend to make the bowl you describe and always adjust my light to see in there better and kind of sit up straight to look into the bowl. My magnetic led light is a life saver for moments like this. I think the bowl shape will block a bunch of much needed light otherwise. For being a novice your results aren’t as bad as I think you think they are. Just keep plugging away

[John]

Hi @ajnegus! Welcome to the forum!

You results are actually pretty good. Especially for using a small home sewing machine. It sounds like your doing everything correctly. You just have to learn to follow a curved line smoothly as you sew. That takes practice. If your struggling with speed make sure you get a servo motor when you decide to upgrade to a walking foot.
Keep up the great work and practice, youll be a pro in no time!

[ajnegus]

thanks so much for all the help and advice, this really is a very friendly and helpful forum Thanks also for the kind compliments, I know there is room for improvement but it seems that my basic techniques are correct and that most of my problems are relating to practise and having the wrong kind of sewing machine I am on the lookout for an industrial walking foot machine, I'm considering something like an Durkopp Adler 291 or a Seiko STW8b.

Just another quick question about seams, can somebody tell me what kind of seam is being used here (this is part of the original bolster of the Recaro seat I am working on). It looks as though on the top side of the seam the material is folded over very slightly so that it covers the blind stitching and on the reverse side both parts of the seam allowance are folded over onto one side rather than being split 50:50 as you would see on a double stitched French Seam. I unpicked a similar bolster to examine how the seams are made and it doesn't appear to be a Flat Felled Seam because there is only one row of stitches physically holding the two pieces together as per a French Seam and there is only one row of stitches visible on the top side. The second row of stitches that you can see in the last photo of the reverse side of the piece is the top stitch. I would like to recreate this effect on my project so that everything looks as original as possible but eventually I'd like to work with leather and I wonder if it may be difficult to fold over such a small amount of material when leather is quite thick and stiff. I would also be concerned that it would be very difficult to ensure that the part that is folded over remains a consistent width, particularly when I'm working in a tunnel as illustrated in my first post.

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[IvanD]

It's a regular single reinforced seam Fig 1
You just sew two pieces together and then fold it on one side and go over with decorative stitch

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[Cody]

@IvanD answered it but I’ll add to it. Most of all the seams have a 1/2” seam allowance or close to. Some people and places on a project vary. This even in leather, isn’t hard to fold over to sew this seam. Just don’t pull the material too hard to stretch the original seam showing the stitches.

[IvanD]

Btw, seam allowance is just some approx number universally picked. 1/2 inch in US, in Metric people use 10mm which is 2.7mm less. In bmw seats I took apart the have about 7mm or slightly over 1/4 allowance. And lot of times we just cut it off after done to remove bulk

[ajnegus]

thanks very much for all the help and advice, much appreciated.

I've been using a seam allowance of 15mm, (1/2" is equivalent to around 12mm so I rounded it up to a more easily measurable number) and it seems to work out ok. I've experimented with this type of seam on some scrap vinyl and fabric and as you say, it wasn't actually too difficult to make the small fold to cover the stitches of the seam. Obviously my top stitching isn't perfect due to the limitations of my domestic sewing machine, its difficult to be precise at 1100 stitches per minute, but not too bad considering.

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[John]

Looks good @ajnegus

[ajnegus]

thanks very much John, it was not too difficult on flat materials but I tried the same technique on another practice bolster which was a lot more difficult. I have enormous respect for anyone who is good at this, I guess these are not the kind of skills you can master overnight. I've adjusted my patterns so hopefully the next attempt will follow the line of the deepest part of the bolster much better and perhaps my top stitching will get straighter with more practise but I haven't managed to produce anything I'm very happy with yet.

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[preston.rea]

I think if you increase your stitch length it may lay better. Seems like it is getting bunched up due to the short stitches. That is just the way it looks in a picture. Might look different in person. Looks pretty good though!

[B1N9S]

I'm also a new starter to this ajnegus. My sister recently did my interior on a project, using a semi industrial machine, she is a seamstress of 35yrs experience and even she said it was difficult and explained how much easier it would be with a proper walking foot machine.

Your results, look pretty good for a new starter AND having a domestic machine. We used to have a saying in the Army - "Train hard, Fight easy". I guess, you'll be cooking on gas, when I you get a walking foot.

[ajnegus]

I think if you increase your stitch length it may lay better. Seems like it is getting bunched up due to the short stitches. That is just the way it looks in a picture. Might look different in person. Looks pretty good though!

Yes I think an increased stitch length might help with my problem and it also might look a little better but unfortunately I'm just practising on a heavy duty domestic sewing machine and the stitch you see in the photo is the longest it will do. Its says 4 on the dial which I think refers to 4mm rather than 4 stitches per inch.

I'm also a new starter to this ajnegus. My sister recently did my interior on a project, using a semi industrial machine, she is a seamstress of 35yrs experience and even she said it was difficult and explained how much easier it would be with a proper walking foot machine.

Your results, look pretty good for a new starter AND having a domestic machine. We used to have a saying in the Army - "Train hard, Fight easy". I guess, you'll be cooking on gas, when I you get a walking foot.

thanks for the encouragement, I guess if you can make a reasonable job using the wrong equipment, it should be much easier when I finally get the right equipment.

I've made another practice bolster and I'm still experiencing some issues. As you can see, on the most pronounced part of the bolster the seam appears to be a little wavy (particularly towards the left side of the first photo), I have experienced this issue before and presumed that my patterns were not quite correct and that my seam stitching didn't follow a smooth curve. I also wondered if the stitch length on the seams was a factor, presumably a longer stitch will mean a less precise curve? I went back to my patterns and made extra effort to make them as precise as possible and I tried to make my seam as smooth and neat as possible. I also reduced the stitch length from 4mm to 3mm, and reduced my seam allowance from 15mm to 10mm (so approximately reducing from 1/2" to 1/4") and I don't think there is very much else I can do to improve the basic shape with my current setup.

Here is how the bolster looks now:

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and this is my seam line which shows a pretty smooth curve and its also precise enough not to be able to see much of the line I marked to follow:

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Having looked closely at what is happening it seems that the reverse side of the seam is quite bulky and the vinyl and fabric are kinking and distorting the shape of the top side of the seam. As you can see I have tried to alleviate this with some relief cuts, have I gone far enough into the material with these? I was a little nervous of weakening the seam too much. I know that I can trim a lot of the excess away which will help, should this be done after top stitching? My reservation with doing things this way is that as I do the top stitch it may end up incorporating a kink into the stitching which will mean I won't get rid of the problem. If however I trim some of the excess seam allowance before top stitching I'm nervous that there won't be enough material to stitch into.

From past experience my bolsters can look really bad before they are top stitched and look much better afterwards but there are still some areas that don't look quite right, particularly on the more pronounced curves, I think some of it is due to the vinyl being quite stiff and not following tight curves very smoothly sometimes. Would an upholstery steamer help to smooth this out?

Thanks so much for all the help, advice and encouragement

[IvanD]

From a pictures I see it looks like all is good with sewing.

Installing part is where you have issue.
I see that your vinyl is to stiff. It doesn't look "right" to me
I also see that your templates is slightly too big. When installed - it have to fit snug and stretch around foam. Steaming and trimming bulk on a bottom will help as well.

[ajnegus]

thanks for your helpful hints.

The new vinyl I'm using is approximately twice the thickness of the original, so approximately 1mm thick when compared to the original (which is approximately 0.5mm). Perhaps the new vinyl is too thick and is why it doesn't follow the curves well enough.

The entire cover is actually under quite a lot of tension and is quite tight, it certainly takes a lot of effort to fit the covers with lots of compressing of foam and pulling on the covers to get everything seated correctly. It might appear to be loose on the outer edges because there is no foam underneath it as the photos show, but this is how the original covers fit so I'm not concerned with that, there is no damage to the foam or missing pieces, that's just how it was from new. You can see that there would be quite a large area on the outside face that has nothing behind it.

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My patterns are now pretty well exact with my latest adjustments, the only thing I am unable to determine is the size of the seam allowance that was used originally as most of it has been cut away after top stitching, presumably to reduce the bulk and allow it to follow the sharp curves more easily.

I think I'll try top stitching and trimming away some of the bulk in the seam allowance to see if it makes a big difference, I'll also give it a blast with some steam from my iron to see if I can persuade the vinyl to follow the curve better. Its only a practice piece so it doesn't matter too much if it goes a bit wrong.

[ajnegus]

I've now top stitched the cover and trimmed away a lot of the bulk from the reverse side and it now sits much better. I also gave it a blast with a steam iron and it helped to remove a few of the more uneven areas and helped the vinyl to follow the curve a little better. There are still a few imperfections but I think they are mainly due to some unevenness in the top stitching which I am still finding difficult. As you can see in the photos, in some parts I think the two pieces of material have pulled apart a little as I've top stitched and you can see the seam stitching, in some areas I have a slight overlap which hides the stitches, I aiming for that kind of finish throughout but I'm finding it very hard to keep it consistent along the length of the seam. I'm wondering if for my next attempt I should increase my seam allowance and then trim it back afterwards, having a larger amount of material on the reverse side might make it easier to make the flaps on the reverse of the seam sit flatter as I do the top stitching.

Anyway here are some photos of my latest effort, the top stitching, trimming of the excess material on the reverse and steaming have certainly improved the shape but there is still a way to go before I'm totally happy with it.

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[Mikesimpson]

Looks like you are definitely on the right track with your adjustments. The latest version looks really good.

[B1N9S]

They look really good now mate.

I was going to say that the piece you previously made, just looked like it needed stretching. Have you got any scrim foam ? I think that can help to pad out your bolters, which may have become worn.

[Cody]

Everything coming a long great. The reason you see some of your seam, is probably how tight you are pulling the material as you sew your top stitch. If you pull too hard in one area, it’ll show the original seam more. If you relax your pull it’ll have that softer more hidden top seam. Keep giving it a go and you’ll get something you’re happy with.