Supple leather how to

[marko69]

This is a Porsche seat with the supple leather option.  Is that a special kind of leather?  How exactly is the wrinkle look done?

[SHHR]

 Without doing any real research on it I would suspect that the word "supple" is used to justify the increased price on the upholstery package, just a marketing ploy. Europeans, Germans specifically though has been known for high quality interiors and materials.
  The wrinkled look, looks like the material is "gathered". I'm not sure how it's done on an assembly line the way these seats would be, but I just cut my material oversize in the length (the direction of the gather), then I'll cut a peice of elastic in the relaxed position that is the size of the finished piece and then start sewing it to the seam allowance while stretching it to the length of the oversized material. The trick is determining the size to cut the oversized panels and maintaining an even stretch on the elastic while sewing. 
  Those seats probably have 2-3" added in length. A lot of guys will back the material up with Dacron to give it a puffy look too, possibly that's where the "supple" name comes from. Whatever you do, don't bond the leather to any Scrim foam, but rather leave it loose attacthing the scrim after the material is gathered by sewing the correct size foam to the seam allowance.
Kyle

[marko69]

Thanks Kyle, I'll be giving that a shot soon.

[gene]

Here's how they make supple leather.

http://i830.photobucket.com/albums/zz228/genejoe/supple.jpg";




gene