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By vicstric
#10357
Hi guys!
I have been doing boats seats off and on for a couple of years in my spare time. I purchased a couple of John's exellent trainings on sewing and seat covers. He recommends (at least my interpretation, to always glue 1/4 or sometime 1/2 inch sew foam to the back of vinyl on recover projects. I started doing this and it really helps the feel of the finished project and also covers the folded over seam allowance which was driving me crazy. The problem i am now having is the added bulk where the vinyl wrapps around the back of the seats. The bulk also makes the Hidem not lay flat like i would like it too. I also have trouble where wrapping around reletively tight corners. Any one else have this problem? would headliner material rather than foam (1/8" vs 1/4") be better and still cover that pesky seam allowance that i see with no foam?
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By John
#10358
Good question! So there is a few things you can do to reduce the bulk.
- Using headliner as backing foam can help because it is thinner.
- You can try only using 1/4 inch on the top faces and no foam on the boxing that wraps around the edge where you are having bulk issues.
- You can also carefully trim the excess foam from the areas that are giving you trouble.

However I would like to also mention that a lot of time I use no foam on boat seats. I usually try to do something similar to what the factory did on the covers that get removed. If the factory uses foam I try to copy that and if they used no foam I copy that too.

I apologize that I wasn't more clear on all that in the videos. The problem is its really difficult to explain every single situation and witch combination of foam thickness or no foam for witch application. Because it changes depending on the project.

I hope this helps!
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By TedP
#10366
I recently re-covered my boat's seats and noticed similar issues using 1/4" foam backing, whereas the original vinyl used 1/8". I have no real solution, but you could try not applying foam to the perimeter areas that get wrapped around and stapled. It would be tough though, as you essentially would have a pattern for the vinyl and a pattern for the foam.

In my project, I just did the best I could and tried to cut away some fabric where they overlapped on the backing at corners, etc. to minimize the bulk.

I did consider using the headliner material, which is 1/8", but it has no scrim cloth, which I think is important to have for seam durability. So, I went with the 1/4", which I could get with scrim.
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By Cody
#10378
What @John said. Try to replicate what the factory did. If you do that and think it’s missing something to help with the filled look. I often use a synthetic cotton and lay it right on the seat making sure it doesn’t wrap around the seat back, so there’s no bulk. Don’t use real cotton. It’ll rot and go bad as soon as it gets wet.
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