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Fri Aug 28, 2009 12:15 pm

[quote="Window Licker]

Rusty O'Toole, I was curious, do you need a special "Welting Foot" to accomplish this stitching so close to the piping, or can it be done with a standard foot. [/quote]

You have me there. My brother did all the sewing.

Fri Aug 28, 2009 1:18 pm

Check out the piping in auto upholstery supply houses. You can get pre sewn with vinyl over a core or else solid plastic piping in a large qmount of different colors. I prefer the solid. Since the piping is on the most vunerable edge and corner locations it is the first to get damaged. With a layer of vinyl or fabric wrapped around a core it will get nicked, cut or torn. And then the core shows through. The solid stuff doesn't do that. Plus it is so much easier to use. If it gets nicked or cut it doesn't keep on ripping. I don't know that much about the different types of feet but the one we had maybe was a standard one and it worked great.

Mon Aug 31, 2009 7:33 am

OK, I did a bit of experimenting this weekend. First I got some foam welting "rope" and glued a strip of vinyl over it to make a strip if Piping, or welting.
Next I sewed it in between a couple samples of vinyl to see how it looked.
The foot I have on my machine is not going to work for this job. It wont sew close enough to the welting. It leaves a piece of the welting sticking up almost 1/2 inch (13mm). I tried again by sewing over the seam with the foot riding on top of the foam rope. It was better, but still not right.
I need to get hold of a welting foot for my machine. Hopefully I can get one from E:Bay. They are very expensive new. I will report back once I get my paws on a welting foot.

Mon Mar 01, 2010 11:40 am

Well, It’s been a while since I posted anything about the interior updates. Here is what I decided to do. I took apart the front seats to see what was under there. What I discovered was a whole bunch of busted springs. I decided it would cost too much, and take too much effort to re-do these. I found a pair of really nice manual seats out of a 1994 Dodge Shadow. I gave $40 for the pair. They even have removable headrests so they look more like the original seats. I can put the headrests in for everyday driving and take them out when it’s time to “show off” Anyway, they fit in pretty well once I cut off the stock brackets and made some custom attachments.

With the new fronts sorted out, I decided to start in on the rest. I bought a welting foot for my machine and discovered it was pretty easy to sew welting! I made a new jump seat and re-did all the interior upholstery. If it was gold, I re-did it.

So far I am pretty happy with it. I have now removed the entire interior and I painted the inside this weekend. That is a good feeling, everything from now on, is going in the rebuild direction, not the removal direction.
Have a look.
I have put up a blog with lots of pics.
Let me know what you think.

http://thevwbusblog.blogspot.com/

Thanks for the encouragement. Scott

Mon Mar 29, 2010 9:31 pm

I went with Sewfine for mine. These are seats from a '74 that Iput in my '72 (wanted headrests). Sewfine was great to work with. -

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