2000 GMC Sierra Restomod: Center & Passenger Seat Upholstery – Part 6B

Time to actually get to upholstery work on the seats for my 2000 GMC Sierra 1500 Restomod project truck. In the previous part, I showed you all the materials I prepared to use and the story about how I got the commercial sewing machine that I will be using. If you haven’t seen that yet, make sure to read it here.

Previous Update: 2000 GMC Sierra Restomod: Seats Upholstery – Part 6A

Click Here To Go Directly To Center Seat Upholstery

Click Here To Go Directly To Passenger Seat Upholstery

Today though, we are going to cover the upholstery on the center console and the passenger seat. I decided to start with the center console because it is small and I can do my very first upholstery project on something that I can scrap if I mess it up, and then can start over. It’s a small surface that won’t cost too much in materials to go to waste.

Then as I get the center console done, I will move onto the passenger seat, which will be much more complicated, but still not the drivers seat so if I mess up, it wont be as prominent as the drivers seat. As I get experience from these 2 pieces, I will move onto the drivers seat and then onto the rear seat.

I know, you are probably thinking the same as I am just now, why didn’t you start with the rear seat? Well… I don’t know… honestly, its not as fun.

The Seats Before I Reupholster Them

First, let me show you what the interior looked like before we start changing it up. The truck had your normal gray cloth interior that you would see on any Sierra of this generation. And it was very well used. With dirt and sludge and rips here and there.

As you can see, it is just a plain gray cloth interior that needs lots of love (it is clean after I did a bunch of work cleaning it). It’s a great blank canvas to start with though, so let’s get to it.

Sewing Some Practice Upholstery Pattern Panels

Before diving right into the upholstery, I decided to do some practice panels, to see some of the patterns. Remember, the seats mockup was already done and seat design was pretty much final, but until I actually start cutting and stitching there is still opportunity to change my mind. So I wanted to see what the various patterns look and feel like in real life.

Here are some patterns I creates to look at.

I do like the diamond stitch pattern and wanted to see what it looks and feels like in real life. I watched some videos on how it is done and made this one. It looks very nice and I really like how the diamonds feel, with foam backing. Very soft.

The horizontal pleats are very classy. I can see these being on some classic cars, and it really has the look of some European cars to me for some reason. I like it. There’s something timeless about this design—it’s understated but elegant. It gives me strong retro-luxury vibes, the kind you’d find in high-end European cars from the 80s or 90s.

This was my favorite though. The double diamond pattern. I just love this. It is the diamond stitch pattern but with double stitching which takes it up a level.

Reupholstering The Center Console

I think it’s time to get my hands to work. I already told you that the original cover for the center console was so destroyed and filthy, I bought a replacement for it on Amazon. It was pretty easy to install, but now, it was time for me to take it apart again.

I had to remove the lid and then the covers. It was pretty straight forward, there was some plastic keepers that were hooked onto some metal wire structure that I had to unhook and the covers came right off. Nothing complicated, once you get the console out of the truck and are able to get to the under neath. It’s one of those jobs that looks intimidating until you realize it’s just clips and staples. Honestly, the hardest part is keeping track of where everything came from so you can put it back right.

It looks like I don’t have any of the details of the sewing process. I knew I took lots of photos of the process, but I cant find any of them. That’s ok, the fun stuff is when I get to working on the passenger seat. There are lots of photos of that process.

Starting With The Lid

Basically, I started with the lid and look it apart. The outer and inner plastic parts snaps together, so you can just pop it apart and then you have access to the vinyl part that is inside. there are a few staples holding it on, so I just used a flat screwdriver to pry those staples off. The side that goes around the top, has a plastic keeper sewn to it, that snaps into a channel that you have to pull out of. All that is pretty straight forward as well.

After removing the old vinyl part, I cut it at the corner seams and used the parts as templates for my black leather. Once I had the leather pieces cut out, I cut out some pieces of half inch scrim foam and used contact cement to glue it to the leather back. Then I stitched it together and ran some French stitch over the seams with red thread.

Assembling it was a little hard, because you have to stitch the leather to the plastic keeper strip and going around the corners was a little complicated. I had to strip it off and sew it on 2 times.

Once the plastic strip was on, I was able to snap it into the channel in the plastic part and then wrap it around the arm rest part to the inside of the part. There I used contact cement to glue the edge of the leather to the inside plastic edge and it was set.

Then I snapped the outer and the inner plastic parts together and my arm rest was ready.

I wish I had the photos to show you of the process, such a bummer I lost those photos.

Continuing On With The Seat Back

This was the hardest part. I had to completely scrap the cover and start over.

The hard part was, again, sewing on that plastic strip that snaps into the keeper channel. Getting that attached just in the right place is super hard. Did I mention this is my first time doing automotive upholstery? Yeah, that was also a big part why it was super hard.

Once I did it wrong the first time, I found out that you have to, not sew the panels all together before sewing on the plastic strip. You have to partially sew it together about half way, so then you can flip it inside out and sew on the plastic piece, then flip is back and then sew it all back up. Oh man, it was a puzzle. Honestly, I don’t even remember exactly the steps I had to take, but if you do this, plan to do it twice. The end product came out nice though. Second time was the charm.

Take a look at the final product. It turned out great for my first time I would say. I think the leather needs a little steaming to shrink it up but overall, I like it. It’s definitely not showroom perfect, but for a first attempt on a curved, tricky surface, I’m genuinely impressed. It taught me so much about tension, material stretch, and how critical it is to plan your panel stitch order.

It is time to get into the fun part. The passenger seat. It will be more complicated but will have many fun elements to it that I was looking forward to.

Reupholstering The Passenger Seat

For all the materials, leather and vinyl I prepared for this project, you can read the previous post here with all the details.

The design we are going with is the mockup that I created, based on the design ideas that ChatGPT created for me. Make sure to read the previous post to get all those important details.

This is the design we are going with so let’s get started. I was a little nervous jumping into it, but also super excited because this seat was going to really showcase the style I had been dreaming about for the build.

The starting seat looks like this below. I will need to first sketch up some lines on the existing cover to visualize where all the different pieces of the design will be, so I can cut out those pieces and use them as patterns for the new material.

Once I got the design sketched onto the seat using some tailors chalk, I could now visualize how it was going to look when done. I was happy with it so I transferred the lines onto the foam cushion using a sharpie, finalizing all the dimensions and marking them on the seat so I could take some photos and use those measurements when working on the drivers seat.

I also decided to build up the bolsters to make the seat a little more cozy and tight. I sat in it after I added them and it felt so nice. It keeps you tight in the seat instead of just being a soft bench.

To build up the bolsters, I used some 2″ high density foam and just glued a strip to the seat using contact cement, and then added another layer on top to get it to 4 inches tall. Then I cut away the unnecessary parts using an electric bread knife. It works very well on this foam.

You will also notice that I filled the original gaps in the foam with the same high density foam. That helped smooth everything out and gave me a better surface to work from. A clean, even foam base makes all the difference when you’re trying to get a snug, professional-looking fit with the cover.

Once I was happy with the bolsters, I went on to creating new patterns for the cover. I saw someone in one of the videos I watched about upholstery, using cardboard sheets to create a pattern so I went to Walmart and bought a dozen of the cardboard poster sheets. Working each surface at a time, I cut out and pasted the pieces together so they have a tight fit.

It took a long time to do the whole seat. I must say, this was getting somewhere but I was a little anxious about wether I was doing the right thing. But I thought, I am going to make this work and kept going forward. That’s the theme with this whole project—figure it out as you go, trust the process, and don’t let the setbacks stop you.

Once the pattern pieces were done, I cut them into pieces at the seams and was ready to start cutting some leather, vinyl and fabric. But first, let’s take care of the center diamond stitch panel.

One of the YouTubers I watched recommended making a stencil for the diamond pattern, so you can recreate it again with the same dimensions. So I went ahead and did that. Those black lines in the stencil are actually holes I cut out with a razor blade. They are so you can transfer chalk onto the material below to mark out the lines.

Once I had the pattern, I glued a half inch scrim foam to the back using contact cement, and then stitched up those diamonds using the thick red thread I bought. After a few test runs, I was confident in it and went ahead and stitched them up. I did both panels at the same time, the one for the seat and one for the back. I should have done them for both seats at the same time, but then where do you stop,

I also have the back seat to do, and I am not even sure what the design for that is going to be. So I just did the one for this seat. That way I could focus on getting everything dialed in before committing to replicating it elsewhere. I figured it’s better to perfect one before mass-producing mistakes.

I had the diamond stitch panel, I cut out the other parts for the bottom of the seat using the cardboard patterns and they were ready to stitch together.

One side at a time, I got the sides done and fitted them onto the seat to make sure I was on the right track. They looked good.

They are looking good. I like the fit.

Next came the center panel that goes between the 2 bolsters. I cut the diamond stitched panel in half and stitched a strip of red leather in between. Then I attempted to use the thick red thread I have to add a French stitch on it, but I kept having the hardest time with it. I struggled through it and got it half way good on there and continued on to the rest of the piece. I decided I wont be using the thick thread any more on anything aside from the diamond stitch panel, as it seemed to work good.

I attached the black leather piece to the front of the diamond stitch panel and then a black vinyl piece below that. This is the very front of the seat where the legs are hanging off. This is why the first piece is leather. The vinyl is below the curve so the legs will not be rubbing there much at all, so vinyl should be fine for there.

Once I attached the center panel to the bolsters, we now had something resembling a seat. As you can see, I used the thinner red thread to do the French stitch on this and I really like how its looking.

To get the center panel to attach to the foam cushion I glued on some velcro on the cover and the foam. This way when the cover is on, it will suck the center panel to the seat and not let it just float around. Needs to be nice and tight to pronounce the bolsters better.

Yeah the foam is not looking pretty but it is functional. I had to adjust it to attach the velcro because there were all these channels in there where the original velcro was.

Then to spare you the repeating details, I stitched together all the panels for the front of the seat back. You will notice that I used the thinner red thread to do the French stitch on the center stripe instead of the thick thread. I really like how the colors and textures go together.

While I’m working on the cover, I started thinking about the seat belt. The original one is very worn and gray. The plastic piece that the belt comes out of is also going to need to be replaced with a black one.

There are also small things like the little plastic rivet that holds the belt buckle in place for ease of reach and the buckle it self. The other side of the seat also has the female side of the seat belt buckle. That piece will need to become black as well.

I ordered the new seat belt webbing from SeatBeltsPlus.com. I got 30 yards of 7-Panel Webbing in Black color. This cost me $168.50 shipped. Great webbing product. I highly recommend.

For all the other black color parts I need, I went to a local junk yard and found a truck that has a black interior. I harvested all the black plastic pieces I needed from it.

I’ll do another blog post about how I attached the black seat belt webbing to the seat belt mechanism. It is easier than you think. I was overthinking it but after watching a couple videos on YouTube, I got the idea.

After getting the belt ready and sewing all the pieces of the cover together, the seat is looking nice! Still a little wrinkly, but it just needs to be steamed to tighten all the material.

The last part of the seat is the headrest. First think I did is draw the new design on the old headrest. Then I cut the headrest cover apart at the seams and then cut the new pieces out on my drawn marks.

I transferred the new patterns onto leather and vinyl and stitched it together.

Getting the cover back onto the foam headrest was something I worried about because it was super hard to get the old one off. It’s just so tight on there. Again, YouTube to the rescue. The said to put the headrest foam into a bag and use a vacuum to suck all the air out of it, then put the cover on.

Wow, that was easy as pie. That does leave the bag in side. I ripped out as many pieces as I could so they don’t stick out. Everything else was easy to finish off. It was one of those moments where things finally start clicking and you realize, hey, maybe I can actually do this. Very satisfying.

After steaming the leather and vinyl, the materials shrunk and tightened up nicely. The seat is gorgeous. I am so amazed that I was able to make this.

It is obviously not perfect, but from this far away it looks awesome!

If you have any questions about any part of this process, please leave a comment and I will do all I can to try to help. Hope you try doing this to your project car or truck. It is so much work but so rewarding at the end.

Now I need to do this one more time, for the drivers side. And then again, although a different design, for the back seat.

Previous Update: 2000 GMC Sierra Restomod: Seats Upholstery – Part 6A