How to Change Upholstery on an Antique Car

This picture shows you how deteriorated the mohair upholstery is on this 1927 car.

This is the current state of the upholstery in the back seat. It is pretty damaged, after being in use for almost 100 years.

Here we can se the back part of the front seats. It is literally coming off, it is very beaten up.

Check out how dirty the upholstery is. Check the pattern of the seats. The idea is to make the same pattern with the same size seams.

You should take as many pictures as you can of the way the car currently is so when you are putting it back together you have a reference.

Start removing everything from the seats.

If there are any nail and/or tacks just remove them so you can take everything apart.

Once you have removed the whole upholstery from the seats, spread it on a flat surface or on the ground.

Cut a small part from the upholstery as shown in the picture.

Place the part you have just removed and place it in a flat surface.

Remove on of the layers as shown in the picture.

Now you can see what is in the inside.

Check out how it was sewn together.

Now you remove the cotton. You will have to duplicate that cotton so use it as an example and for measurements.

We are left with the top fabric with the folds. Spread it out to remove the folds, this will help for taking measurments.

We first measure the bottom fabric and as you can see from the pciture it is 4 inches between pleats.

Measure the top fabric. You can see our top fabric measures 4-1/4 inches between pleats. As I want to make a bigger fold on the top fabric I will use 4-1/2 inches for my pleats of the top fabric.

Mark the back side of the panels you will use with the measruments you took in the previous steps. In the picture you can see how I marked the bottom fabric with 4 inches lines.

Mark the top fabric with the measurment you got. As I said I will be using 4-1/2 inches between pleats on my top panel. You can see in the picture my marked top fabric panel.

I am going to use two layers to fill the pockets so they are nice and fluffy. The bottom layer of cotton will measure 3-1/2 inches in width, check picture.

The top cotton layer will measure 3 inches wide, check picture.

You can use a sharpie to mark the lines to cut the cotton. To cut you can use scissors like the ones in the picture.

In the picture you can see the 2 layers of cotton I will use to fill the pockets.

Now place the 2 layers of cotton between the bottom and top fabric and start sewing using the lines you marked.

Here you can see how it looks from the top fabric. I have completed half of the work in the picture.

Continue sewing each pleat until you finish the whole piece.

Add the zipper to the end so you can close the upholstery when placing it on the base.

Now it’s time to prepare the base so that you can place the seat cover.

Fix a pad over the spings with staple so that it stays in place. We place this pad so that the seat cover doesn’t go directly over the springs.

Stretch the seat cover and staple it to the bottom like in the picture.

Here we have the seat cover installed. As it is a modern velour if you stroke down it shines and stroke the other way it doesn’t shine. We will take and aditional step so that it won’t shine as much when stroked to one side so that it doesn’t look to modern.

We use a steamer against the nap over all the fabric. In my case we had to do it down to up like in the pciture.

In the picture you can see the finished front seat bottom. The process to do the back of the Front seat and the complete Rear seat is the same so you should follow the same steps.