Re: Upolstery of door panels for the 1950`s

Posted by HH56 On 2023/1/2 10:44:26

One thing I have noticed is the padding behind the upholstery fabric seems to be a multilayered soft tissue paper like material -- each layer being almost like a stiff kleenex in feel and seveal layers make an overall pad of about 1/8" thick. Where the pattern is pressed in the fabric, the under layer padding seems to fuse together and becomes a solid stiff material bonding the fabric to the panel board. I suspect that padding is some kind of special material made just for the purpose and is the main item which holds the fabric in pattern as well as provide the raised panel effect between the lines.

I know there are a lot of heat fusible iron on materials for repairing clothes and holding layers of fabric together but don't recall ever seeing anything that thick. No idea how large the sheets of fusible material come in but if something thin could be found around 2 or 3 ft square perhaps a few layers of that stuff would do the job. At any rate, I think if you could locate something like that special padding then your idea of making a sheetmetal pattern press might work.

The only company I know of that does the heat pattern door panels at the moment is SMS Fabrics in Oregon and last I read, they have a large backlog.