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[Seychellois]

Hi All, I am a newbe to upholstering although I have experience with Marine canvas projects on my boat. I Have a Pfaff 1245 industrial machine and have had good success with sail covers, hatch covers, ladder covers and the like. So, while nowhere near an expert, I am able to makes some things which are pretty useful and look fairly decent.

However I am really stuck on one project.

Some time ago I removed and replaced the fixed portllghts (windows) on my boat. I installed what are called surface mount portlights which are adhered to the exterior of the cabin. The ports used to be in frames which had a finished look inside and outside the boat. But the transition to the frameless surface mount ports has left me with a very unsightly cutout visible from the inside of the boat.

To explain this a little better, imagine a 3/4 inch plywood sheet. I take a jigsaw and cut a rectangular hole in the plywood about 8 inches wide and 30 inches long with some fairly sharp corners. Then I stick a piece of plexiglass window material over the hole covering one side of it completely. The result is I have an attractive window on one side and a very unattractive raw cutout on the other. That raw cutout is facing the cabin interior and looks terrible.

So I had hoped I could upholster this cutout in such a way that I could hide (cover) the raw edge. This upholstery needs to hang over the interior edge by about 1/2 inches to cover irregularities in the original cutout. So I am trying to fabricate a 90 degree angle "strip" which I will be able to run around those corners to form a cover for the interior part of the cutout and also provide a 1/2 inch frame around the cutout. Preferably with one piece of material so there is only one joint.

I tried to use piping on 1/2 inch vinyl strip with the piping around the perimeter of the cutout to get some framing overhang with the flat strip fully covering the interior edge. This actually looks pretty good but the piping is too narrow to properly "fame" the cutout, I need more width around the interior perimeter.

I hope this question makes sense. If so I was hoping someone might have an idea what approach I could use to accomplish this. If I can provide additional info. I am happy to do that.

Many Thanks!

[WILD BILL]

A couple pics would help a lot.

[Seychellois]

Yes, I should have included some. I tried but could not figure out how to post a pic. I think I got it now so I will take some pics and add them today. Thanks for responding.

[Seychellois]

Hopefully these will help understand my question.

Note in the first photo you can just see the after portlight which I covered (badly) with my black piped vinyl material.

[Adam12]

You can make larger diameter piping with rope or pex tubing, 1/4" would really fill the gap. Something like that, stapled down, with some hidem stapled on top of that should yield the look you want. Could also bend some aluminum flat stock or use rubber moldings for boats/rv's. There are sooo many profile options for trim molding, i am sure you can find several options that would work.

[Seychellois]

OK, that sounds like a possibility. I had not thought about using tubing for the piping. I may opt for silicone tubing because I have used pex for plumbing and I will have a hard time turning those tight corners, But silicone will and they are a lot of size options.

I am going to search YouTube for "how to" on using staples. I have not used them before in my canvas work so I'll need to learn how to do it so I can cover them cleanly.

Thanks for the great ideas.