The Upholstery Forum

What is a proper way to cut for example bolster piece from a hide? I am talking about positioning template. Should it stretch front/back or side to side?

Also, does anybody have picture of hyde with stretch directions?

Found info on hides. Picture shows best parts and stretch direction. So, I know which parts to use for top surfaces of seats/bolsters. Question remains - how to place templates on hide to take advantage of stretching?

Red line shows stretching, 2 blue "sausages" is top of bolster for example. Should I position them as A or B?

I’ve always wondered about stretch too. I would think for bolsters you’d want it to stretch say for the back of the seat, top to bottom. I’m just thinking out loud and here’s me reasoning. If you stretch left to right and you want it to be a bit tighter you can pull towards the rear of the seat and it’ll pull any wrinkles out and can be hidden in the back if you have a bit of excess material back there now. Also if the stretch is left to right and you want to do the same thing. It won’t stretch and pull the wrinkles out as well. Hope that makes sense. And like I said, just thinking out loud. I could be very wrong

@Cody
I've seen people recommend placing parts angled (not A or B) so it stretches both directions. It was recommendation when laying out on vinyl (kind that stretches one way only). I wonder if leather is the same and we should try to put it on an angle

@IvanD
If you angle your patterns it will be in bias and that's a good thing if you want to minimize stretch in one direction, the only problem is that wastes a lot of material and that can get very expensive fast when you're talking about leather. So it's kind of a two edged sword.

@Bondo497
I think it is important to set a goal on how ideally you want it and go from there. In my current project there is many little parts which can be cut from sides/etc. I can at least try to layout everything in best way to balance stretch and material use.

All long pieces can be laid in diagonal and good material use can be achieved I think. If you have one hide and just need small piece of it - it's one story. But if you cutting a lot - there is place to play

What I would is sit in a bolstered seat and see which way the material natural wants to stretch with your weight and position patterns for that direction.

This is a mater of personal opinion and you will get many answers fron different trimmers.
Personally with leather my main focus is placing the high traffic pieces on the strongest part of the hide. Witch is the middle section of the hide. Second focus is avoiding waste. I dont think it makes any sense to waste material just so you can have the stretch in one direction. That being said theoretically you should try to have the more stretch going in the direction of your shortest seam. If you have the stretch running on a really long seam you can run in to more misalignment problems. This is not usually something I worry about though.

In most cases you want the stretch to go across the shortest section of the cut ; in your example id place it in the (A) position. That way youll get less distortion with use. Thats my opinion on heavy use areas. On other pieces you can utilize the stretch differently to cover odd shapes.