auto Leather/Vinyl French Seam Repair Help - Eyelet Pops Through

[AZStitch]

Can anyone please advise best approach. This is a car seat, the inner seam is leather, the outer (right) is vinyl. I'm having issues with the leather side.

I can insert the needle tip in one hole of the leather and out the adjacent hole, but as soon as the much larger eyelet passes through it splits open all the leather between the two holes. The needle feels like it is hitting a welting cord or something behind these holes, but I see no piping, just a foam coating on the back of the leather. Since the eyelet can't push inward at all it's forced to push outward and breaks open the leather - screwed. The vinyl side is no problem, stretches, flexes.  

I'm using a 3" curved needle and T135 bonded nylon. I had to bend the tip slightly to help get needle out the adjacent holes, and takes tremendous force with pliers to get the needle through the two holes. I test soaked a couple inches of this seam in leather conditioner for 3 days, that didn't help.

On the backside of the seam I noticed the gray thread that is visible on the seat, but there is also white thread. I'm not sure what this is holding down - maybe it is piping of some sort. The only thing I can think to do is use the outer seems. See Plan B below. The leather is 22 years old.

Click thumbnails for larger view:

Driver seat view. It's the outer bolster.

This shows the existing holes,
I thought it would be easy to sew together - NOT.

The old thread broke/failed as some point.

This is the backside of the leather.

Seam holes breaking through here:

Plan B? Should just I use the outer threads, like the image below.

Edited March 4, 2020 by AZStitch

[Mark842]

I don't have a solution on how to repair it. I would remove it and just make a new cover but I understand that can be a daunting task. The reason you can not push the needle through is because of how the french seam is designed. The hole you are sticking the needle into is sewn shut a few millimeters past the hole.

[AZStitch]

Thanks Mark. The vinyl side is a piece of cake - needle easily goes in and out the holes, the vinyl stretches quite a bit. I ordered smaller 2" curved needle, see if that will help, and will soak the leather using Leatherique Renewer.

People see a small gap with some broken threads and think 50 bucks, maybe an hour to fix. Hah! They don't want to hear what they really need is to recover both front seats with new leather - to avoid mismatched front seats. After they calm down on that price then you have to explain they MUST also replace the top and bottom foam for the drivers seat because at this age, the foam is compacted and ALWAYS crumbles apart due to nearly 25 years of AZ heat. Broken down old foam under new leather would show way to many wrinkles. Next, you explain this  particular car is to old, OEM replacement seat foam is no longer available. Lastly, their car is new enough that the restoration industry has not started to remake (repop) it's seat foam. They are truly jammed up, so you try to do a cheapo fix to help them out. 

 

 

[chrisash]

Take it apart, clean it, add some conditioner, turn it inside out, then sew the two halves together, then when done fit a string piece of glued heavy canvas over the seam and about a inch overlap. Turn out the correct way and refit over the foam

Clean and condition the other seat

[AZStitch]

I dropped down to a smaller 2" needle and soaked the leather for 3 days. Compressed the leather area with a hand grip bar clamp to help bring the gap together. Turned out pretty good and much safer than removing the entire fragile cover.

Thanks all.