Rear seat and cargo cover

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Mark
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Posts: 884
Joined: Mon Apr 22, 2013 9:49 pm
My tercel:: 1984 Automatic, 1981 sedan
Location: Victoria, B.C.

Rear seat and cargo cover

Post by Mark »

My rear seat is in overall not bad shape. It's not shredded, but the seams have started coming apart. I think it's the vinyl aging and tearing along the stitch holes:
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I wanted to get a seat cover for it, but my cheapness and obsession to do everything for myself made me decide to make one instead. I got some upholstery fabric at a local fabric store. It was a light tan sort of colour since that was the closest colour that sort of matched the old seats. I realized that by itself, that fabric would look too much like a blanket thrown over the seats so I thought I'd put a strip of another pattered fabric down the middle of each rear seat. I wanted plaid as a nod to the SR5 Tercel wagon fabric. The closest I could find in colour that would sort of match a gold Tercel was a grey/yellow-green sort of pattern. I measured as I went along and marked the fabric with a piece of chalk until I figured it was close enough. I first tried using a sewing machine to stitch the hems, but that was too slow and frustrating so I just sewed it by hand.
The final result (minus the elastic straps and plastic clips I sewed on later to hold it under/behind the seat):
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I had some plaid fabric left over so I used it to refurbish the cargo cover. When I bought the wagon years ago, the cargo cover was torn and in two pieces so I removed it and left it off ever since. Now I ripped off the old shredded fabric and sprayed the bare cargo cover with spray glue. I put the plaid fabric on the cover and quickly smoothed it down. The glue adheres almost instantly so there was no chance to re-position the fabric. I had forgotten that the plaid fabric has straight lines on the pattern and I just stuck it down at random so that's why the lines are a bit crooked. In hindsight, this would have been a better project for plain fabric. I roughly cut the excess fabric around the cargo cover leaving about 2" all around. I then folded/glued this over on the other side. I could have done a much neater job with this, but I reasoned that it wasn't really visible when the cargo cover was in place. I spray painted the underside black a bit to blend things in somewhat:
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Mark
Highest Ranking Member
Posts: 884
Joined: Mon Apr 22, 2013 9:49 pm
My tercel:: 1984 Automatic, 1981 sedan
Location: Victoria, B.C.

Re: Rear seat and cargo cover

Post by Mark »

Here's the final result:
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I tried to tailor the fabric to match up with the contours around the seat and it worked out as well as can be expected for not taking proper measurements or using a template.
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Ridlbox
Top Notch Member
Posts: 223
Joined: Mon Aug 10, 2015 9:51 pm
My tercel:: 1984 Toyota Tercel SR 5 custom aluminum rims 4 a motor custom rims Bluetooth stereo system
Location: Plymouth CA

Re: Rear seat and cargo cover

Post by Ridlbox »

Nice color match on that fabric looks pretty good there
i will find a tercel in a music video
That's my new goal 8)
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