The Upholstery Forum

In the video on hidden stitch pleats you use a 7/8” fold allowance for 1/2” scrim. What FA would you use for 1/4” scrim. I’m replacing a set of folding, back to back seats in my boat with a bench. I’m using 3” high density foam and the cover will be stapled to a plywood base. It seems to me that 1/2” scrim would leave a little too much material under each seam. But, what would the FA be for 1/4” scrim?

If it’s leaving to much material under the stitches. I have come back later and trimmed off the excess that really serves no purpose. This seat isn’t finished. And down right. But I trimmed them like I mentioned but angle it from the edge to about 2” in. This got rid of the bulk by the reinforcement stitch around the edge.

@Cody ,

Nice cody great look!

@BigRig thank you. Have to do the front seats next. Hopefully this helped a bit with the original question.


Here it is finished and stretched a bit of steam still but close enough

@Cody , always and a great look, love hidden stitch pleats my favorite.

@Pgnelson45
Usually with most 1/4 foam you dont get any shrinkage in the panel when sewing pleats. The 7/8 FA on half inch is accounting for the 3/8" fold and 1/8 shrinkage. On 1/4" foam your FA will most likely be 3/4". I would do a test piece first though. Great question! I should have elaborated more on that in the video.

Thanks Cody and John. Nice looking seat Cody. John, you normally do explain things very well so I went back over the video a couple of times to make sure I didn’t miss anything. Maybe I should just use the 1/2” scrim foam and call it good.
I have another question on this same project. In covering the engine housing I want to beef up the existing foam a bit. The original foam is still in good shape but the edges need some help. I steamed the foam and brought it back to almost original shape but it needs a bit more. Would you use poly batting here or foam. I’m thinking foam would help define the edges better than poly would but poly would give me the fullness I’m looking for. What are your thoughts?

Foam is always better in my opinion but will take a lot longer than batting. It depends on what the quality level of this project is.

This is a bit late now I’m sure but I’ll give you a pic and way I measure. Seems to work well for me and doesn’t have to factor any shrinkage per pleat, just over all. First I decide if I want a stitch on the seat center line or the stitches to straddle the center line. For this example well use the stitch on the center line. So what I do now is find the center of the piece I’m sewing and mark that line. Then on both sides of that line I mark .25”. This may be too small for you, if so mark 3/8 or a 1/2. Just whatever your comfortable with. Now we’ll work to the right over the original center line we drew. Well call that line number 1 and the other lines on the side of that number 2. So the number 2 line to the right of the number 1 line. Measure out how wide you want your pleat. I made my seat 4”. So I marked 4 inches over. Made a line then mark 2 more lines to the right of that in .25 increments. Then from the new far right line, I measure 4” again and 2 more lines in .25 increments till I don’t need anymore pleats to the right of the original center line. The opposite is the same when going to the left of the original center line. So every 4 inches I’ll have a set of 3 lines. I go to my machine and sew the center line of all the groups of 3. Once I’m done with that, I’ll fold my material on that stitch line. Now you’ll see 1 of the other lines of the group. Now sew on that second line of the group of 3. Repeat the whole way down. Now no matter what allowance you choose per pleat, the end result will be the 4” or whatever you want. The end pleat is always in this case 4.5” wide. I do this cause if for some reason it shrinks overall more than I wanted. There is seam allowance, and I can just cut out an individual pleat and just add it to the end or both ends.

Hopefully that makes sense. Basically sew number 1 fold along number 1 and then sewn number 2.