The Upholstery Forum

Hi Guys! @john , I have yet another delima... I have an engine shroud for a ski boat. It has a ~6 strip of carpet at the bottom. It was just a tad short so when i pulled the bottom around the corners one of the seams split. There is not enough to try an sew it back together. Anyone have a slick way to deal with this via a splice of some kind that will look good. you know, good like a custom touch...lol. I am not fond of the idea of pulling this sucker back off again:

@vicstric ,

You could almost turn that rip into a custom look. Just and idea but here goes. Cut a V and fold the carpet under holding with adhesive and using adhesive put that really nice looking beige vinyl behind. It might look slick! It does not look like that cover is going to pulled on to hard so this may work for a fix.

@bigrig , yeah that was what i was thinking, make a V or half round shape. I am just not sure about fastening together. The carpet isn't really glued down on the outside because there is a lip on the bottom that turns out. The carpet is just held on via stitching to the vinyl on the outside and then wraps under to the inside and is glued at that point. There isn't really any tension on the carpet itself other than enough to hold it taught. But I am not really following what you are talking about with the vinyl. Can you expand or PM me with a sketch or something? I will include some pics of the shroud:

@vicstric Option #2 turn that carpet in where it is ripped and hand stitch it together. That may be the fastest most practical option. I am going to try and get a picture loaded for you.

@vicstric Personally I would just pull it off and sew a new piece on. I think that will take the least amount of time and will look correct.
I'm curious why did the carpet rip there?

The cover looks really nice!!

@john , I already got everything back together and the customer seemed happy with everything. The rip may have had 2 reasons. the shroud was fibergalss and is flared at the bottow so the lenght there was more than i had measured for. Also I trimmed the carpet back some at the seam. That may have been a bad idea. I ended up putting a triangular piece trimmed in vinyl to cover the riped seam. looked ok. The customer thought it looked really cool.... lol. I will attache a pic of the repair and of the parts reinstalled into the boat.... The parts i recovered were the back pad, the back seat and of course the engine cover....

That looks awesome @vicstric!!! Glad you got it figured out and the customer was happy!!

I carpet dozens of boats a year, I will only use 8.5 wide carpet, 6' is no good. If you have to seam it up, put the seam in an area that won't be visible, or as visible as the main walk way.