Modern Vespa

I've always wanted a black seat on my Salvage GT, but could never justify the cost of buying a new one or paying to have it re-upholstered.

After painting my bike red last summer I decided that the brown seat wan't what I wanted. So my wife has agreed to put her sewing skills to the test.

We bought some remnant motorcycle seat leather from a local upholstery shop for $10. The only other supplies we needed were upholstery thread and sewing machine presser feet for leather/vinyl.

I'll try to take pics throughout the process, but if my wife gets on a roll and gets it all sewn up while I'm at work, I can't help it.

Here is a before shot.





Last edited by Mesmer on Thu, 05 Apr 2007 04:02:29 +0000; edited 1 time

The brown seat that will become a black seat.

I popped all the staples off from underneath where they were tacked into the plastic molded seat.

The foam and the plastic seat mold comes right apart once the leather is off. There is no need to separate them, but it was kinda fun to see between them.

My wife "ripped" the seams of the old seat apart. We're gonna use the old seat pieces to make a pattern for cutting the new leather.

That's all I've got for the night. So now my scoot is out-of-service until my seat gets finished. I'm hoping to get it finished either tomorrow night or Friday night so I can make it to the 3 peaks ride this weekend.

That's great that you've started this thread. I've wanted to see what goes into redoing a seat. Look forward to seeing more of the process and the final result.

I actually liked the brown leather.

Excellent. Maybe you can make paper copies of the leather parts and sell them to curious MVers who want to try their own exotic fabrics!

(my mom made dresses like that in the 60's!)

Now that's an idea. I've got to get my seat done first.

good stuff. look forward to seeing it finished.

with a pattern to copy like that you could even try a two tone seat covering by stitching the two colours together before fitting it onto the foam. black and grey would look good on your bike, the highlight being the front and the sides.

I still have the parts from my old GTS seat if anyone wants a paper pattern.

Here are some more shots that my wife took while making the template and sewing it up.


Laying out the old seat to make a new template.

More templating.

Sewing the new seat.

And the finished product!!!


All done!

All done, well done!

Looks schmick.

Here are some shot on the bike.

Before:



After:

And more...... why not?


Close up.

New vinyl added to the front.

Very well done! Looks perfect with your flyscreen. Good job

very nice..ever thought about doing it in real leather?

Three cheers for Mrs. Mesmer! While the scooter looks great - she should be gettin' the love for a job very well done!

That would be pretty cool, but for waterproof reasons I didn't go that route. A leather seat sounds like more maintenance. But it would look hot!

Yes, Mrs. Mesmer gets all the credit for this project. She knows I owe her big!

The new seat looks Great! Your wife did a fantastic job, it looks OEM. I can not get over how it changed the whole look of your bike. Congrats, Beale.

wow nice going !

That's really awesome. I learned the reupholstering method of pattern making a while back while working on a project. I've been trying to do something like that to make a seat for my scoot, but I've grown distracted by other projects and the fabric just sits there taunting me. Then again, brightly colored faux furs have a way of doing that.

That is fantastic!!

to your wife!

I gotta talk my mother-in-law into doing that for me.

She made a pair of Pirate pajamas for my son where the stiching around the hem is actually tiny pirate ships! These modern sewing machines are awesome.

Excellent! Looks like it came from the factory.

Thanks everyone. I've been really liking the new seat for the past few months. I just wish I had done it earlier, I might have left my bike black. Black on Black would have been nice!

What a great job! Your wife is pretty skilled around the sewing machine!

I can tell she's worked with leather before.

Thought the brown cover would look better on your red scoot...untill you showed both before and after pics . The black leather seat looks just right sir! Congrats!

I wish...

She had never sewn vinyl before. But she does have lots of sewing experience, so It was very similar, just needed a different presser foot for her machine.

Looks great. Question here...did your wife use some kind of upholstery staples to attach the new cover to the seat? I recently changed my seat cover out and also had to remove the old staples. I couldn't find anything comparable to reattach it.

Nope. I restapled the cover to the seat mold. I just used a standard Arrow T50 stapler.

Well I'll be! I wasn't sure if that would do the trick. Thanks!

Hey, what kind of flyscreen is that? Its exactally what im looking for for my GT. Great job on the seat! Looks very nice.

It's this one from Motorsport Scooters

http://www.scooterwest.com/item_detail/Sport-Flyscreen-GTGTS/1026/

Was it a Teflon foot?

For those of you who want to try this yourself, make sure your sewing machine has enough power to sew vinyl or leather. Lower-end machines have smaller motors and will get bogged down with heavy fabrics. Also, use heavyweight thread and a needle designed specifically for leather.

She actually bought two feet. A teflon foot, and a roller foot. I think she ended up using and keeping the teflon foot. It worked well enough that she took the roller foot back.

That's awesome.

I'd pay for a for a copy of the template she used...

I get my GT tomorrow, and have already determined that I want it to have a white leather (or similar sort of material) seat when I'm done making her over to my specifications.

I sent my template to BurgerBob, so he may have a template he could send out. I got the originals back from him but I'm in the middle of moving to Washington, so I won't have access to them for a while.