Just a quick post.

   I have to take a day off upholstering. My back flared up. All good. I finished the second bucket seat yesterday. Seams are straight. No weird bulges. Everything lined up like it should be. I was going to pull the drivers seat out this morning. I need the van for class tomorrow. Guess I will start on passenger seat and save driver seat for next Friday.

   Here is the newest photo.

I like it. I will also be doing headliner and carpet when seats are done. Not sure if I mentioned that.

    We have not started doing any upholstery or sewing in school yet. But being in a town with several furniture manufacturers, There is remnants of fabrics left over from factories in all the second hand stores at $3.00 a yard. I decided to start reupholstering the van seats for practice. I may have $80 into everything needed to do four seats.

I have this neat sewing machine that I cannot keep my hands off of.
   The first obvious step was to get a seat out and take it all apart.

    Then start cutting the seams apart to make a pattern.

    seemed easy enough.   Pretty soon I had a mess going.

    So...It was time to cut out the new pieces. The new pieces needed to be cemented to the foam backing.

    Not horribly hard to do. First piece sewed together quite easily. Taking my time to get it right. The speed will come.


Next was the backrest. Many new things to consider here. Remember, I am teaching myself. I can be meticulous about making sure things look right as they go together...but I am just learning.

Got the pieces all taken apart. Seemed important to lay them out so the way they go together can be easily sorted out.

Sewing them together was interesting. I actually find the sewing easy.  Backrest went together fairly easy. Lots of extra things the seat never had, but okay.
    I ended up with this.

   I used some special bonding paint for changing the color of plastic.

   Ended up with this
Forgot to take pictures of headrest going together....It is a special little challenge of its own. Finally done. The following pictures are of the finished one. The next one in line to be done sitting next to it. Sort of a before and after. Then first one back in the van. Keep in mind that there were no rips or major stains in seats. I just wanted to get started doing upholstery.

   

   I will finish the seats and also replace carpet and headliner. It will be my rolling billboard.

I have a few more sets of seats to do for friends. I told them if they bought material, I would do it for the practice. Then I will start charging to do seats.  I am pleased with the visual this will create. The seat looks every bit as good in person as it does in the pictures. my seams are straight. I really like my new sewing machine.

   Upholstery school is off to a good start. It is sponsored by the local furniture manufacturers, so there is 2 months of classwork that has nothing to do with actually doing upholstery. I get it. They want us to take classes on teamwork, math, communication, etc.

   I keep thinking about the doctors that told me I would never work again. Maybe not in a grueling job at a plant, or driving truck for long hours every day. But I am beating the odds. I am tenacious. I will get there. Just barely getting started and the jobs are already lining up. Before I am out of school I will be going full bore. I won't get into specifics at this point, but....I have a hookup in auto upholstery. Tied to what I already knew before getting here, I am going to do very well.

I picked up my sewing machine today. It will be my main machine. I now have two machines.  My portable sailrite machine and this Consew 206. It was a bit more than I had originally wanted to pay, but it will last the rest of my life. I am getting ready to do some serious sewing with it. It sews beautifully.

Did I mention the little daysailer last post?

Let's not forget that.

I ran into a difficulty registering the trailer, but that is now just about solved. It is a Galilee 15. If you search Galilee 15 on youtube. you get a short clip of a guy sailing one.  The top photo is from the original owner. I am the second owner. The boat is a 1985 model. I will be putting it in the water very soon. Lake Hickory is just 8 miles away. Lake Norman(much bigger) is 38 miles away.