Upholstering the van bench/bed

My boyfriend and I are currently converting a panel van into a windsurfing camper (more about that in a future post), and we needed something to sleep and sit upon that wasn't a pair of £1-petrol-station-tripod stools. What I came up with ended up looking something like this:

When I started, the man had already built the base of the pull-out bed (below). The seats we needed would have to be able to withstand soggy wetsuits, fold out into a bed and look a bit cool(?). I hadn't done any upholstery before, and hadn't really done any sewing since I was at school, so this was something of a learning process!

I discovered that there is a very good reason why upholstering is an expensive process - the materials alone cost £££, and the whole project (altogether) probably took me the best part of a week to complete.

Things needed:

9mm ply
welting
upholstery vinyl
upholstery thread
4" upholstery foam
scrim-backed foam
staples and staple gun
canvas
spray adhesive
sewing machine

The first thing I did was to draft a rough design of how I wanted the thing to look. I did this by Photoshopping an existing image of a car seat someone else had made, and drawing out a plan.

I then got hold of some thick plywood (9mm) and cut it down to size to make the bottom of the seat pieces. I needed three pieces in total: a base and two backs. The bipartite back was necessary because bits of the wall will need to open out above it (long story, will probably have its own blog post at some point).

Because of the bulk of the cushioning that would be added later, the boards also had to be narrower and shorter than the space the bed would eventually fill. There was a lot of faffing about and adjusting and tweaking, but I think in total there was about a two inch gap between the boards when laid out, and an inch around the outer edge of the bed where it would meet the walls or other bits of furniture.

Once the boards were cut to size, I got hold of a thin bread knife and attacked some upholstery foam. This is the expensive bit. A piece large enough to make a bed will set you back about £100. I did not want to risk having a bed that squished right down to the wood when weight was applied to it, so I went for the 4", high-density stuff. In retrospect, medium density might have been better. High-density foam does make quite a hard cushion, though I'm hoping it will squish more with use!

After following the advice of various internet tutorials, I cut the foam about 1" larger than the base boards along each side. Unfortunately, this turned out to be wayyyy too much excess, as high density foam just doesn't ploomf as much as the foams other people seem to have used. I ended up having to cut it down again later to about 1 - 1.5cm around the edges.

Next, a load of upholstery vinyl (this is the stuff with a scrim backing) was ordered from Fleabay and I set about cutting out all of the squares I'd need. As they were different sizes and this process was probably going to take an age to complete, I made sure to number each piece.

Next, and most importantly, after all that knifing and cutting, I gave myself some pink as a reward. 

To do the actual sewing, I used a rather ancient family heirloom - this Singer 28k - made in 1912 and still running incredibly smoothly. It has Chinese characters on it because, although made in Scotland, it was actually bought out in Hong Kong. No idea what they mean though. Probably something like 'Singing Scottish Iron Needly Thing'.

Anyway, the pros of using this machine were that: 1) I didn't have to fork out £££ on an industrial machine; 2) I now knew how to service and repair it; 3) there would be little chance of the motor breaking (since the motor was essentially me); and 4) it's made entirely of iron anvils and therefore able to sew through very heavy materials. 

The negatives I later discovered were: 1) keeping lines straight with one hand is a bit tricky (a lot of the time I failed); 2) no backstitch; and 3) this is still a domestic machine - when the layers became very thick over seams, the scarf of the needle would just graze against the presser foot and it would skip stitches. This led to much swearing. To lessen this effect, some sewing machines allow you to alter the timing by adjusting the needle bar. Not so on this machine. I found that using a size-90 needle (normally you'd use a 100 for upholstery) reduced the occurrence of this a bit, and pressing down on the top of the presser foot bar during each stitch also helped to squash the material more. 

Anyway, the first bit of sewing was easy. I put together the bits with the seams which I didn't want to look rounded (i.e. were the blue meets the purple and green meets blue). I then marked out the lines where the faux tuck'n'roll would go, 4" apart. I used tailor's chalk for this, with is actually pretty useless on vinyl. Biro would have been better, if impossible to remove afterwards!

After that, I spray-glued some 10mm scrim foam to the back of the vinyl and top-stitched along the lines. I really wish I had chosen 6mm foam instead, which wouldn't have looked as cushiony, but would have been much easier to sew once it got to the later stages!

Some people advocate a Teflon presser foot for top stitching, as it doesn't tend to stick to the vinyl and mess up your stitches. Actually, I found the Teflon presser foot stuck just as much as the original metal one on my machine, so ho hum to that! The different vinyls also had a different amount of stick to them. Green and grey sailed through the machine, blue was just evil. Thankfully, these top stitches would be cut off later so it didn't matter if they looked a bit rubbish. 

Once the top stitching along the lines was done (and I had to do this in several sections because it soon became too bulky to fit under the machine arm), the foam-vinyl sandwich is folded right-sides-together and sewn along the fold. 

After that, I cut the bulk off the back. Very few people on the interweb tutorials ever mention this bit, but it'll make the final thing look much tidier. 

When turned over, you'll have some faux tuck'n'roll! 

I continued sewing away, adding some welting (or vinyl cording) to the top edge of each cushion. You can make the welting yourself, but I chose to buy it to save time and effort. Currently campercushions.co.uk are the only people I can find in the UK who sell it. I discovered that, when adding the welting, you have to sew as close to the rounded bit as possible, which involves carefully balancing the presser foot on top of it, whilst trying to feel for it through a layer of 10mm foam, vinyl and scrim! I tried a piping foot, but turns out you can't fit any bulk under that at all :-(. 

So, after much more swearing and re-sewing, I ended up with this:

I then turned it upside down and forced the 4" foam into it, topping the cake off with the layer of ply. What followed was much more grunting and teeth grinding to make it all fit:

The next stage was to pull the vinyl taut over the foam, and staple it to the base of the ply. There seem to be conflicting instructions on the interwebs about how to properly do your stapling. I went for the 'perpendicular' approach. 

After that, I added a layer of waterproof canvas to the bottom, stapling all the way along the edges and making sure that all of the staples were recessed into the fabric so that they wouldn't scrape on anything:

In the final product, there were a few more visible stitches than I would have liked, but some of that was because of the non-straight lines. 

Lastly, I just had to make two more backing cushions and a couple of pillow-type things. Somehow, and I still don't understand how, some of my precious lines on the middle cushion didn't line up. I still have nightmares about that. 

 

Overall though, I'm pretty pleased with the final thing!

Singer 28k gets a full respray

I had planned to do an upholstery project, which meant getting my great-grandmother's old Singer out of storage and working again. I knew the old machine would need a few bits tweaking and a good service, so naturally decided to look into how to do it.

Then I became distracted by all the pretty blogs on refurbishing old machines and generally FIXING things. Oops.

The idea of servicing the machine rapidly morphed into something altogether more ambitious, and in the end it became a much bigger job than I had anticipated. But to cut a long story, this:

...turned into this:

No, that's not G-grandmother's machine. I couldn't risk destroying that one! This one's from eBay: a £10 jobbie that was half-rusted and smelled heavily of mould. My plan was, if I destroyed it, at worst I would have a useful pile of spare parts for the other Singer.

Unfortunately it turned out that the family machine was made a good twenty years after this rust-bucket, and quite a few of the parts probably wouldn't be transferable anyway. Success or several kilos of gently rusting iron were now my possible outcomes.

The first thing to do upon bringing the rusty machine home was to inspect it. The serial number dated the machine to 1893, but since that time it obviously hadn't had an easy life. There was very little or no chrome left on the unpainted metal parts, while all of the paint was chipped, scratched and irrecoverable. It had obviously seen quite a bit of damp in recent years. The wood of the casing had warped out of shape (as well as exhibiting some water damage) and there were now several gaps in the joints. There was also a small forest of mould growing under the drip tray, but that was scraped off in sheer disgust before I had time to think of photos. The mechanism was in surprisingly good shape though. It hadn't been used in 30 years, but it still turned over and made a fairly good stitch (sometimes tinged with a rusty hue!). Lastly, there were two funny metal nodules where the machine met the wooden case, covered by some sort of icky white sticky substance. I later discovered that these were once rubber bumpers, and made a mental note to find nicer replacements.

Next, I attacked the machine with a set of screwdrivers. Taking everything to pieces took the best part of a day to complete. Many of the screws were rusted in place and wouldn't budge, plus I wanted to make sure I properly documented the take down so that I could put it all back together again later. Some of the screw heads were already a bit mashed, and I'm ashamed to say I may have added a few extra... um... swirls to some of them during my fervid disassembly. But I'll know for next time.

Some parts of it would not come out at all. The needle bar had to remain where it was, as did the stitch length screw and several bits of the internal mechanism. The little swinging inspection flap was the worst though. Nothing would loosen the screw on that, and I needed to remove it in order to do a half-decent job on the respray. A drill was the only way forward, and the offending screw was soon a hollowed shell of its former self.

Once everything was taken apart, photographed and labelled, I could start with cleaning up the formerly-chromed, shiny metal bits. I placed these in various acidic liquids that were to hand: coke, vinegar and lime juice. The most effective one, incidentally, was lime juice. Most of the parts were only left to soak for a night, but the catch from the case was completely rusted solid. It took a week - A WHOLE WEEK - of soaking to loosen that particular bit up again. But now, with a bit of oil, it moves freely and even the lock works (with a screwdriver as the key) :-)

While everything was bathing in pools of acid, it was time to remove the old paint from the machine body. Stupidly, I went for the cheapest paint-stripping chemicals I could find, and of course these did very little except kill all the grass in my garden where I spilled bits of it. After a second trip to the shops, I returned with something stronger (although everyone complains that Nitromors isn't as strong as it used to be - true/false?). This stuff did make the paint bubble promisingly, but it was still the consistency of rubbery glue and very difficult to scrape off. If any of you try this at home, it is worth investing in one of these (see image below) to remove the softened paint. It plugs into your drill and will save you from some nasty RSI.

After much swearing and gnashing of teeth, I ended up with some bits that looked like this:

Paint stripping probably took two-to-three days to properly complete. NAKED.

Before I could do the next fun part, I had to cover or fill the parts that needed screening from nefarious liquids. Most of these special zones had already been masked off or stuffed during the paint stripping process, but the chemicals and sanding had destroyed these protective layers. Many ear buds were sacrificed in this process, as they perfectly fit into the oil holes.

Next, I sprayed the machine with a primer to prevent rust and provide a key for the paint.

I already had some idea of how I wanted to repaint it. I'd seen this William Morris wallpaper print and wanted to take some ideas from it. It's dated to the 1870s, so would have been a little old-fashioned by 1893, but...well... artistic license and all that. 

I decided to do a RED version. Because I like red. 

This pattern would need a solid base coat. I chose this nice pillar box shade of rouge.

I think I ended up spraying around three coats of this stuff, sanding between them and leaving a day for the paint to dry where I needed to turn bits over to reach the undersides.

For the next stage, I would need some very special stencils that would produce a repeatable pattern  - and not look as if they were hand drawn. I knew that sticky vinyl shapes could be cut by lasers, so I just needed to commission some of my own design!

I found a man to do this - a David Mills from Magnetic Marketing - who very kindly took my vector drawings and converted them into little sticky shapes. I thought applying them to the machine would be easy, but no... That took the best part of another day to do!

Once applied, I was free to do the next bit of spraying. I used a candy deep red automotive paint (from Specialist Paints) and applied quite a few coats to get as much of an effect as possible. Unfortunately, this meant that the stencils wanted to be good friends with the new coat of paint and would try to tear through it whenever I removed them. If I had sprayed just one layer of candy paint, they would have been much easier to remove... but it wouldn't have looked so pretty. Scoring along the edge of the stencils with a knife helped a bit, but it was still an intensely laborious process which took another day! Anyway, I eventually ended up with a pile of used stencils and this machine...

While all of that was drying off, it was time to tackle the wooden case. I'd already sanded the surface of this down, but it was still warped and had a few gaps in the joints that had been partially repaired. I didn't really want to mess with this too much, so I added some new glue to the repairs and began painting with a dark varnish. Incidentally, I've always hated seeing glue repairs that are painted in an attempt to match the woodwork, so I made them gold instead.

 

No Singer case would be complete without a big, shiny decal, so I ordered some of my own design from Rothko (again by creating a vector drawing), and plastered them on:

More decals went on the machine...

These were waterslide decals (like those temporary tattoos you have as a kid). They had to be placed on the machine and left to dry overnight. In spite of my best efforts, they looked a bit grey, wrinkly and bubbly the next day, but my horror at this sight was unfounded. Several liberal sprays of clear coat tidied them up and made them look pretty. The only problem was that (as I found out) clear coat takes several days to dry. I turned over my paint work after a day before spraying the other side... and it got stuck to the paper under it! You can still see the problem area here:

I fixed it as best I could, but the whole thing would have had to have been stripped down and repainted all over again in order to properly hide it. I don't think it looks toooo visible, however.

With clear coat applied, I could now start rebuilding and oiling the machine. This was surprisingly quick and easy to do. By this time, I had spent so much time cleaning, polishing and painting all the different bits that I had a fairly good idea of what they all did or where they should go. To replace the rubber bumpers, I found some nice little square ones that were just the right size, and I also got hold of a new rubber ring for the bobbin winder from Alansew. The only major problem I had was in finding a replacement screw for the one I had to drill out. I had to buy three different sizes before I found the right one!

Some of the parts needed bits of the new paint scraping off to make them fit better, but I got it running and sewing again in no time at all...

So there you go! Not quite perfect, but not bad, either!