What you'll need
 

Piping and flutes

If you compare a modern BMW leather seat and an old Jaguar seat the Beemer seat looks quite dull. That is due to the missing flutes and piping. The most important design detail of vintage car seats. Piping is to finish off edges around a seat with a round strip at the joint beween panels. It looks like the beading fitted on the wings of a vintage beetle. Flutes are a series of paralell pleats stitched on a backing material such as calico.

Piping

As mentioned earlier pipes are made by stitching a piping cord into leather strips. I used a 3 mm rubber piping cord which is quite inexpensive. The leather strips were about 3.5 cm wide. Length is according to the templates. There is a special foot for your sewing machine to create the piping. If you dont want to spend the money a "half foot" will do. You fold the leather strip around the piping cord and sew it together. There is also the possibility of glueing them together but I haven't tried that. It is not as easy as it sounds. My advice is to practice on a piece of scrap.

Producing the pipes not that difficult but putting them in place needs quite a bit of experience. You have to put the piping in between two panels which will obscure the view of the piping completly. First of all I put them together and adjust them with clothes pegs. They work much better than needles. Afterwards you start to sew them together. Use your fingers and the piping or "half" foot of your machine as guidance. If the piping is examined from the face side, there won't be any stiches seen at all.