What you'll need
 

Materials

Leather

Second you need plenty of leather. For a S-Type expect to use about 15 sqm for the seats and if you choose to use leather for the door padding and the other bits and pieces of the interior another 7 spm. Originally vinyl was used for the door paddings, but sometimes it's hard to get matching colors. In my case good vinyl would have been more expensive than leather.

Buying leather is a time consuming and difficult task. There are many different grades and prices range from about 30 to 80 Euro per square metre (A square metre is about 10.76 sqft). First of all there is leather for furniture and leather for cars. Latter has UV - stabilized dye and will not bleach in the sun. Both look the same, so be sure you get leather for car interior. If you want to keep your Jag original your only choice will be Connolys of Wimbledon. Otherwise you can also check your local wholesaler. Jaguars usually have seats with a smooth surface opposed to vintage Mercedes seats which have mostly a scared surface.

When buying your hide make a careful inspection. Hides come in sizes of about 3 sqm up to 8 sqm. The bigger hides are usually from elderly animals and will not possess the suppleness required for a good job. So go for hides of about 5 sqm as a rule of thumb. Take care of scoring, holes, marks of the skinners knife and other surface markings. They will make parts of the hide useless but will help you bargaining. Most of the leather around the edges will be wrinkled and of not much use. I used this for parts which are not seen eg. the bottom of the seat base.

Other material

For the flutes you need stuffing material. Originally cotton stuffing was used. I used some syntethic fibre.

The base for the flutes is calico. I used some strong cotton.

You need also some piping cord (about 20 to 30 m). Originally it was made of drilled paper which works surprisingly well and is very durable but hard to get hold of. Modern replacements are made of rubber.

To cover the springs of the front seats you'll some jute (for single layer two pieces about 1.0 wide and 1.5 m long)

The cushions are made of Dunlopillo. Replacements are readily available but quite expensive. Some parts can be made using normal padding foam. For padding some parts you need thin foam.

You'll need plenty of thread. Till now I used about 120m for the drivers seat. Originally cotton thread was used. To work with cotton thread you need thread lubricant. Use special stuff from the upholsterers. Normal oil will stain the material. I use Polyester thread without lubricant. It must be thicker than the thread for normal clothing.

As far as glue is concerned you should stick to your principles. Most trimmers continue to use the old-fashioned liquid glue. If you go for originality use the old Dunlop stuff which is said to be still the best. I used Pattex without solvents and Tesa spray. One important point is material suitability. Most solvents contained in various glues will pipe your foam to /dev/null (for non-linux users: Will dissolve your foam) under devolpment of hazardous fumes which are toxic and a fire risk. So be careful. Use the well known piece of scrap to test your glue. Very useful comes a plastic spreader.