Packard Forum Index » Post-War (1946-54)

I have been working on my 1951 200 Deluxe since October after a 27 year nap. I am not restoring it but rather just helping it become an interesting driver.
The seats were in sad shape with critter nests, missing padding and torn upholstery. The springs and frames were perfect though. When I searched for the original material I found it was $130 per yard and I figured I needed 8 yards at least. That would eat up most of my budget for the whole project so I devised a plan B.
I found a grey upholstery fabric that came close to matching the grey of the rest of the interior at Hobby Lobby @ $17 per yard and bought an old black Singer sewing machine on Facebook marketplace for $40. It was January in Western New York and too cold to heat the garage so I set up in the cellar and commenced to learn to sew.
I took the old covers off and cut them along the seams where they were originally sewn until I had 6 or 7 pieces for each cushion. Laid the old piece onto the new material and cut around it giving myself enough room to sew or fold the material over as needed.
Putting the covers together took pins and then sewing by hand (basting) before running it through the machine.
Very time consuming but I think they turned out well. As my wife said, Most people have never even seen a Packard and won't know what the interior looked like originally. Included are photos of finished product. The swirls in the photos do not appear on the seats. Cheers, Dan

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If someone clicks on the photo to see the full-size one, then the "swirls" will disappear.

That's just a photo artifact from displaying at a smaller size.

The upholstery looks very good!

It looks very nice! The swirls are what known as Moiré Pattern and are common when photographing things with lines when using a digital camera, particularly when the photo gets reduced as it does when uploaded.

Nicely done! The gray does blend in nicely with the rest of the interior. Was the sewing machine you picked up a commercial machine? I had originally thought to use the standard sewing machine we have, but I'm quickly realizing that it can't handle larger thread and the stich length is far too short.

-Kevin

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Kevin, The Singer is just a standard model (99K) portable machine. I used Heavy duty thread and opened the stitch length as far as it would go. 6 or 7 stitches per inch I believe. I tightened the top tension to the "4" setting and used a heavy-duty needle as well. I had no trouble sewing with it and in some cases I was sewing four thicknesses of material. I found an older model (1957) on purpose as there are no plastic parts to break in the machine. Dan