I started out by drawing some sketches for the design of the interior. Once the customer decided on an interior design he liked, I got to fabricating and sewing. First thing to tackle was the custom carpet and jute padding. As well as wrapping the firewall. Then I made patterns from the old headliner and sewed up a new one to match the colors we chose. After the headliner was installed I moved on to the custom door panels. I patterned and made all new panels from ABS plastic and covered them with closed cell foam. I then transferred the design to the panels and wrapped them in vinyl that felt very similar to leather. We used vinyl instead of leather to save on the cost of the custom upholstery. Once the custom door panels were installed, I started disassembling the car seats. I cut and shaped new seat foam with an electric knife and a grinder. Then I laid out the new design and made the patterns for the new seat covers. I transferred the custom patterns to the vinyl and cut the pieces out. After that it was time to back all the pieces with scrim foam and sew up the seat covers from scratch. Installing the seat covers was pretty easy. I just had to be careful when stretching them on. Steam helps a lot with this. I finished up installing the seats and trim pieces. The customer was ecstatic to see the beautiful new auto upholstery in his Hot Rod Chevrolet Bel Air.

During the building of this interior I filmed and entire “how to” training course that teaches custom auto upholstery from the very beginning. If you’re interested you can get more information here. https://www.theluckyneedle.com/products/