Anyone out there have any experience of making their seats from scratch using leather?

How did it go, was it just like using vinyl, how much did you use, were did you get?

Please tell me all or is just another of my mad ideas that will end up as an evo-stick f**k up I have a garage full of um along with various welded lumps and bent aluminium

I'm planning on making my own seats for my car. rather than going down the route of an actual seat, I'm just making "cushions". Plywood bases, with padding and probably leathercloth coverings.

My plan is to cut the bases to size, and stick a chunk of foam to them (that is roughly the right size/shape for my botty). I'll then cut and stitch up a cover for the seat, that can be stretched over the foam, and stapled to the ply base.

the hardest bit will be getting the pattern and stitching right for the cover. A test from some cheap canvas should help me perfect the pattern though!

Cheers
Andy

Get volvo rearseats and split down the middle, glue to the marine ply and sew the covers less four inches. this makes very good leather seats. It has the right foam as well.

You can buy seats covered in leather, as a cost option. There are companies that re-upholster seats in leather.

Probably a better option is to buy second hand seats, say of eBay and use the existing cover as a template. Undo the stitching and cut out copies from your leather.

WOW!

Good luck dude... Would be wicked though - I tried this in my old escort cabriolet and tried to recover the interior in leather to replace the worn out half leather and it was a nightmare!

To start with leather is so hard to sew you have to have an awesome sewing machine and nice leather needles and to get the stuff to stretch properly and not bag or pull apart at the seams is soooooo difficult!

I would put the work to your friendly local retrimmers - they arent as expensive as youd think - either that or just get some leather seats from a production car somewhere?

Know you mean though - mmmmm cow!!!

Geoff

I got an entire Volvo interior (seats anyway, front and back), even had the motors for adjusting.

I took all the metal off and just used the foam (which needed cutting down), cut some wood to size and put the leather cover back on.

The seats are quite comfy but I'm sure they could be much better. A bit of a rush job really.

I have photo's on my website if you want to take a look.

HTH

Another option is to buy a leather office chair (yes, really) and cut and shut the bits to fit.

Cheap as chips too