[53ICED]

Hello, I introduced myself on another thread, but I had a question or 2. I am seriously thinking about getting into auto upholstery. I love classic cars. We have a 53 chevy 210 4 door sedan we are gonna restore. I am not really sure where to begin. Should I take an upholstery class from the local tech? Would it be helpful for auto upholstery? It seems pretty indepth since it is 6 weeks, 1 day a week from 8am to 5pm. Or should I just buy a machine and auto upholstery books (forgot the names at the moment) and try to learn on my own. The tech class is limited to projects chair size and not sure if you can bring car seats. Thanks for the help I have done some sewing before like making a quilt and a few other small projects so I am not completely new to it. I can work hard as well even though I am a woman, but I wondered how hard it was too.

[adamsautoadvice]

It depends. Is that auto upholstery program good, respected, value for the $, interesting for you, etc? You can probably find a way to apprentice without doing the program.

[Coodeville]

I couldn't find ant sort of upholstery training around here. So I learned everything from Dan through this board. I did pick up a few books though and have watched a number of video's on youtube.

The most important thing though is to get the right machine. Don't believe the guys on eBay who sell Singer Model 66, 15-91's and 201's that claim the machine does auto upholstery - it's not going to happen. I found that out and am now a collector of those three machines. They're great for clothes but could never ever handle sewfoam. You want to pick up a Singer111W155 or one of its clones like a Consew 225. Let this be your first lesson here.

[DanTwoLakes]

Originally Posted by adamsautoadvice

It depends. Is that auto upholstery program good, respected, value for the $, interesting for you, etc? You can probably find a way to apprentice without doing the program.

It is next to impossible to find an apprenticeship. Most people who do it for a living don't want to train someone to take work away from them, unless they are retiring and selling you the business.
An upholstery course is a great place to help you with the basics, and more importantly will give you some experience with an industrial sewing machine, which is far more important in auto upholstery than it is in doing furniture. The sewing in auto upholstery is far more complicated.
It's my opinion that you can't learn upholstery without hands on training. How would you know if you're doing something right or wrong? Even more important are tricks of the trade, which you can't learn yourself, and sometimes are hard to describe in words.

Here are some pictures of a '53 Chevy 4 door.

[adamsautoadvice]

If it's that hard to find an apprenticeship than I guess I would recommend doing the Auto Upholstery Classes. Probably a good place to start.

[DanTwoLakes]

If you read his first post, the upholstery class he would take is not an auto upholstery class, it's a basic upholstery class limited to chair size projects. It would still be helpful, though.