# Where to find quality pleather and suede? Recaro Trophies



## Zorba2.0 (Jan 28, 2005)

*Where to find quality pleather and suede? Recaro Trophies :Updated with finished product!*

I want to re-upholster my Trophies but I can't any decent fabrics online. I'm looking to get a synthetic leather like what's in the 99+ A4's for the sides and a grey suede for the center. Anyone got a good link? I couldn't find much on Jo-Ann's online either. tia








The passenger side right bolster is torn even more than the left which is why I want to re-do them.


_Modified by Zorba2.0 at 6:01 PM 8-27-2008_


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## psychoactive (Jan 1, 2007)

*Re: Where to find quality pleather and suede? Recaro Trophies (Zorba2.0)*

hey man, I work at a furniture store. We have quite a few different brands of upholstery, and each brand has 100-??? fabrics. If you got a furniture store close by go check it out and see if they will order yardage for you. The best thing is it's for upholstery, so it'll work great for daily use.


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## where_2 (Jul 21, 2003)

*Re: Where to find quality pleather and suede? Recaro Trophies (Zorba2.0)*

If you visit an actual JoAnns store, you might actually find some synthetic leather that looks pretty good for $30/yd. If you get on their mailing list, you get discount coupons for 40% off which will make the project more reasonable... 
I bought a few yards of Black for a Corrado project... Covered the sliding shade on the sunroof with a chunk. Bought enough to do some seat parts too. 
When you actually go to do this job, also get some polyester quilt batting to help poof up the final product when you put it on the seats. Saves having wrinkles where you don't want them. Once you start reassembly, you'll see what I mean... 
Here's a run down on what the project will be like, although some fabrics may be more forgiving than leather: http://forums.vwvortex.com/zerothread?id=3314208
Here's where to get the hog ring pliers if you don't want to do the tie wraps: http://www.sjdiscounttools.com/kd3702.html I've got a set from SJDiscount sitting on my kitchen bar waiting for the project to proceed. I would advise against using the ordinary white tie wraps (they don't have much UV inhibitor in them and will break over time.) Use the black ones with a metal catch peg if you use tie wraps at all. 
If you need any foam parts, check with this guy: http://forums.vwvortex.com/zerothread?id=3132600


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## Zorba2.0 (Jan 28, 2005)

*Re: Where to find quality pleather and suede? Recaro Trophies (where_2)*

Thanks for the input, went to the actual Jo-Ann store in town and found some nice black pleather from 14.99 on up to $30 a yard. They even had a brand I had found online called "Rave." No luck on a dark grey suede though, but I may go with a dark green. Anyone know how many yards would be needed for a set of seats? I was thinking 4 yards of the leather and 2 for the middle total.


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## where_2 (Jul 21, 2003)

*Re: Where to find quality pleather and suede? Recaro Trophies (Zorba2.0)*

4yds will go a LONG way. Check the width on the material B4 you buy. I think the stuff I bought was 54" or 60" wide. It's sold by length... 4yds would be 12 feet long. 4yds seems like too much, but better to have too much than too little. If you get good at it, sell the extra parts you make from the spare material. You'll already have the pattern. 
My wife suggests looking for a store sales flyer just inside the front door. Grab the 40% off coupon (good for 1 item or one cut piece of material), located on the back cover of the flyer. Buy one item or one cut length of the material you want. Carry it out to the car, go back for the next item you need... Repeat as necessary. http://****************.com/smile/emthup.gif Present the coupon to the person cutting the material to get discount. Check out through the second register the second trip back.


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## Zorba2.0 (Jan 28, 2005)

*Re: Where to find quality pleather and suede? Recaro Trophies (where_2)*

lol, nice! Will do. I'm still not sure whether I should do this myself though. I've used a sewing machine before but don't I need an upholstery sewing machine? Or just stronger needles?


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## Zorba2.0 (Jan 28, 2005)

*Re: Where to find quality pleather and suede? Recaro Trophies (Zorba2.0)*

Found all the material I needed. I bought 2yds of Christopher Lowell Silver Suede for the centers in store with that 40% coupon. They were fresh out of the Rave black vinyl so I went online and bought it, turns out the coupon works online too. I saved $47 on the 4yds of vinyl.


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## where_2 (Jul 21, 2003)

*Re: Where to find quality pleather and suede? Recaro Trophies (Zorba2.0)*

Nothing wrong with saving $$$ when you buy from them.







You'll want to find some heavier than normal thread to sew this stuff with. You'll want to coordinate your needle selection with the thread size you buy. If you're feeding an american machine, then the needle sizes range from 8 (smallest and lightest) to 19 (largest and heaviest). If you're feeding a european machine then needle sizes range from 60 (smallest diameter and thread) to 120 (largest diameter and thread size). Talk to the folks at the store, tell them what you're doing, they'll help you with needle selection based on your thread selection. 
When you cut your material out, give youself ample "spare" room on the edges to work with. When you pull the original seat material apart, you'll see that they didn't leave much "spare" room between the edge of the fabric and the stitching. It's easier to keep the presser foot on your material going around corners when you have extra fabric on the edges of the seams. You can trim it off later, but you can't put it back on after you've cut your material out when it starts getting frustrating because you cut it too close to where you need to stitch. An extra 1/8" to 1/4" around each piece will help when you're trying to sew the pieces together. 
Another pointer: You'll want to adjust the stitch to be longer horizontally than normally used in "average" clothing. If you look at the stitching on a set of seats, it's usually got a long horizontal movement in the fabric material between places where the needle punches through (similar to the stitching around the pockets on a pair of jeans). Cut out a simple area of your material and use some scraps to set up this distance using the settings on the machine. It's going to use a long stitch like a pair of Levi Jeans, rather than a fine stitch like a designer shirt. You'll also have to set up the thread tension correctly to work with the materials you've got. The scraps from the edges of a cut out piece come in handy for this. 
Once you get the machine set up, the sewing part should be fairly simple.


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## Zorba2.0 (Jan 28, 2005)

*Re: Where to find quality pleather and suede? Recaro Trophies (where_2)*

So after getting estimates from $400-600 a seat, I decided to do it myself. I got 3yds of Rave Black Ink vinyl, 300yds of polyester Upholstery thread, and some needles for leather/vinyl. The machine I was working with was an old 70's Kenmore my Grandpa had. 
Pulling the old stuff off was easy. Then I traced them, turned them over (for the other side) traced a second one and cut them all out. I left a little extra room on the edges to have more of an edge to feed the machine. Also, I had to do some foam repair in the bottom half with some Dap-Tex latex foam spray. This worked out better than I thought. I just needed to apply it in multiple layers because it would collapse a little when squeezed. Now, its more firm because of spraying, drying squeezing it flat, spaying again, etc. Anyway onto the pics.
























































































































and finally, installed








Overall, I'm very happy with the results considering I did it myself, it was my first time sewing this kind of a project and I saved myself over $400.


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## kamdenburke (Jun 22, 2008)

Looking good. I bet it was hard to get the stitches even close to good. Give the material time to stretch out and settle into the foam. My buddy had aset of seats recovered and it looked like yours when he finished but over about a month they stretched out and the wrinkles went away. Did you find this difficult to do?


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## Zorba2.0 (Jan 28, 2005)

*Re: (kamdenburke)*

It wasn't too difficult. The hardest part figuring out where to match the pieces together and start sewing. Also, I couldn't get the stitch length to match the originals. I dont know much about the controls on a sewing machine, but I'm sure if i asked the people at Joann's they could have helped me out.


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## where_2 (Jul 21, 2003)

*Re: (Zorba2.0)*

Looks Great for a first shot with a sewing machine you're not entirely familiar with. 
One of the things about making the seats look "stuffed full" is to use some new polyester quilting stuffing. I recently stretched a fresh leather seat cover over an old Corrado rear seat bottom. I had to put varying amounts of quilt "batting" under the seat cover to fill in the wrinkled spots. I ended up buying a "twin sized" bag of "High Loft quilt batting". With a pair of sewing shears, I cut chunks the size and shape of the original quilted material that VW used. I then cut additional pieces as necessary where I noted that wrinkles were forming as I stretched the leather and vinyl combination onto the seat foam. 
When you do the next seat, get a bag of hi-loft quilt batting and use it to puff up the fabric and make it look fully stuffed. I haven't tried washing and livening up the foam. I just pulled the original leather off, and cut batting then re-used the original hog rings. 
Keep up the good work.


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## Zorba2.0 (Jan 28, 2005)

*Re: (where_2)*

Thanks for the tip. I noticed some wrinkles have settled from sitting in the sun, but i will have o fill in the rest using that batting http://****************.com/smile/emthup.gif


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## mkivwagon (Jul 18, 2006)

*Re: (Zorba2.0)*

so how much did it end up costing in the end?


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## Blu_Hare (Mar 13, 2007)

*Re:*

bump to read at home


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## Zorba2.0 (Jan 28, 2005)

*Re: (mkivwagon)*

I think I spent a little over $100 on everything. I still have enough left to redo the other seat this spring. I also made a new e-brake boot for it


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## JCMaler (Jan 8, 2003)

*Re: (Zorba2.0)*

Interested in selling the OEM vinyl when you recover the other one? It looks to be in pretty good reusable shape. -any cracks?


_Modified by JCMaler at 4:22 PM 5-15-2009_


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