Sewfine Products: Vanagon Seat Upholstery

Sep 12, 2015 Abel Longoria Vanagon 2

After a 600 mile one day journey I knew I needed to get my stock seats in my 1987 Westy redone ASAP. The stock seats were toast. Cushions were gone, no support, no nothing. Ouch! I began to check around Houston at various upholstery shops and it seemed like every shop I spoke to it would cost about $1,500+ to get each seat redone. Whoa. Not only that… but they needed the seats for 4 – 6 weeks. That part I couldn’t live with. There’s no way I could be without my van for up to 6 weeks. Here in Texas we don’t put our toys up for the 7 months of winter. We used them year around. Local was not an option.

I began to keep an eye out on TheSamba.com classifieds for a pair of seats I could buy, that way I could drop off my seats at the upholstry shop and use the ones I bought off TheSamba as temporary seats until mine were done. Zero down time! That’s more like it. Smart huh? lol.

Then… I found a pair of grey seats, with working armests from a ’90 Westy for sale in Colorado Springs, CO for $250 for the pair. Sweet! I had another bright idea! I emailed the seller right away and asked if there was anyway he could deliver them to Denver. He said he could as he makes a trip there once a week for work. Double Sweet!

I bought the seats immediately, and you’re probably wondering why would I want them delivered to Denver. Well… Sewfine Products is located in Denver and they have some great upholstery options for Vanagon seats. So I called up Logan at Sewfine and explained I had just bought some seats and I’d like a price on getting them redone there and shipped to me in Houston. Logan’s price was way under what my local shops quoted me and the best part was he could have them boxed up and shipped out 2 weeks after he receives them!

I quickly chose my colors. Dark Grey XTR Vinyl Insert with Graphite XTR Vinyl Trim. My local shops were going to charge $3,000 just for the 2 front seats and have them for up to 6 weeks. With Sewfine, I got my front 2 seats completely recovered with new foams, a matching seat cover for the rear bench seat, rear arm rest and rear pad cover which were shipped loose since I planned to get installed here locally PLUS shipping to Houston for about $2,100 total. And I got them delivered to my door about 3 weeks after Sewfine received the seats. Win-Win.

Now I’m riding comfortably!

I took the rear seat cover that had already been sewn up to match the front seats along with the side armrest and rear pad cover to a different upholstery shop here in Houston. They charged me $100 to install the covers total and could have it done in less than a day. I dropped off the Van the next morning and it was done by 3pm.

The foams on the rear were fine as they still had plenty of cushion left so I just opted to have a local shop do the install over the stock foams. I was very surprised when he told me it’d only be $100 for the install. SOLD!

I was originally concerned about the shipping and worried if they’d make it safely but once they arrived I was pleased at how well Sewfine packaged them up. They would have been able to take a beating and I’m sure the product would have remained unharmed.

Take a look through this gallery below and see the great work that Sewfine Products has done for me. Some people who opt to install their own seat covers can use this gallery as well in order to see the process and maybe help flatten out that learning curve a bit.

The Gallery

• upgrades, vanagon, westfalia

Abel Longoria