Pre-war (up to 1942) 1939-40 Owners - Help Needed

[39LaSalleDriver]

I need advice from anyone with 39 or 40 model cars. I am redoing the upholstery on my 39 LaSalle and have encountered a problem. The seat covers that I got with the car appear to me to be from a restoration done in the 80s or early 90s. They are a nasty microsuede material that really needed replacing. I suspect they were a kit from someplace like Kanter, and while I hate the material, overall the pattern pieces themselves aren't entirely bad. So far I have been able to make very good patterns off of them for the back seat and arm rests, and the project has advanced nicely.

However, something is wrong with the front seat and I am going to have to redraw the pattern pieces to reflect what the originals looked like. Factory photos and photos of survivor cars show a row of piping/welting around the sides of the seat portion of the front seat. The problem is, I can't see if that row of piping/welting goes across the width of the whole front seat (like it does on the back seat) or not. On the covers I have, there is no piping/welting, so I am going to have to change the pattern to incorporate that feature somehow.

Can somebody please report to me which drawing I have provided here most closely (if any) resembles what the front side of the front seat should look like? I really need this information because I can't find any photos of what it looks like anywhere, and I really need to get this project finished up. Thanks for any assistance.

[V63]

Typically the front seat would match the rear. The material would be a Wool, ... typically Bedford cord or broadcloth.

[39LaSalleDriver]

Thank you for participating. Unfortunately it doesn't address my inquiry so I guess I have failed to communicate clearly what information I am seeking. The question is, on original cars does the piping/welting extend across the whole of the front seat, or does it stop at the french seam?

[LaSalle5019]

Selection A

Scott

[Ohjai]

Jon I hope this helps somewhat.  Pictures are from a 1938 60 Special brochure. 

[39LaSalleDriver]

It's Scott for the win! Thanks again for saving my bacon. That is exactly the data I needed.

Jim has highlighted my biggest frustration in my quest, I had yet to turn up any shots of the front of the seat in sales literature, factory photos, Ebay photos, or anything else. Plenty of profile views, but never head on. The way the spring section was designed combined with the design of the seats that I could discern had led me to suspect that view A was the correct pattern to follow, but I just wasn't sure because it would be inconsistent. The fact that the piping/welting extended across the front of the back seat would have suggested that the same was true for the front, but things just weren't adding up design wise. I can now proceed. So a big thank you!

Here are some shots of what I have achieved so far. They still need a bit of tweaking before final installation, but I am fairly pleased with how they are turning out. I figure they're not too bad considering that while I have a good degree of sewing experience, I have never reupholstered anything before. Also, I am using a basic home sewing machine, not an industrial model with any walking dog or twin needle abilities.

[LaSalle5019]

Looking good!

[Tom Boehm]

Jon your upholstery looks great. I hope our paths cross at a Grand National sometime. You get as hung up on the tiny details as I do.

[39LaSalleDriver]

Thanks guys, I've been working very hard to make the interior presentable. Funny how when I first got the car it was acceptable to me how it looked, or so I thought. But the longer I had it, the more I realized I wasn't ever going to be happy with it. It's been four years in the making to get it revamped, and would have been longer but I got spooked by resources drying up on us. So I decided to make a final push to get it done.

Speaking of details Tom, as you well know sometimes that can be a curse!   In some ways I've already felt compromised because I couldn't find the proper fabrics. I ended up having to go with a plain wool broadcloth and a Bedford cord as the most acceptable replacements. Then comes the whole pesky business of not trusting anyone to do the work right because of lacking skill, or just wanting to get the job done and out the door. Nobody is ever going to put the attention of doing it as right as possible into the job as you can unless you have really deep pockets. I don't have deep pockets, and it's a lot easier to swallow the pill of imperfect results when it's me doing the work vs. paying a pro a crap ton of money to potentially skim over details that bug me worse. I've had to replace a couple of broken springs in the drivers seat back, remake all the burlap casings in the back seat, straighten and reinforce all the springs in the front seat to keep it from sagging, rebuild the back center arm rest that wasn't working right, restructure the pressboard parts of the side armrests in the back which was broken, make new foam rubber padding for said armrests...A ton of work that would have cost a fortune to have someone else do and I doubt they would put the time into it to look every little detail up to see how to do it as correctly as it can be done.

Things are going fairly well. Just got the back section of the front seat done and reinstalled on the frame yesterday, as well as recovering the framework of the front seat. Hoping to get the bulk of it all done by the end of this week. I'll be sure to post pictures when I get there.