Many of you are aware that I've been very interested in interior fabrications, primarily the seat insert material that Porsche provided.
I had purchased many years ago the factory interior binders that showed the original fabric swatches and how they used the various houndstooth colors in combination with colors of vinyl and leather. Then I came across an NOS set of blk/white houndstooth seat covers at Gary Emorys for a standard set of seats. Those covers were taken apart and the houndstooth put into a set of sport seats which currently reside in my 67S Gulf blue car.
Initially I was able to find and provide (through Tony at Autobahn Interiors) OEM Porsche houndstooth in Blk/white which I had purchased direct from Porsche "classic". Ultimately I bought all the yardage they had available and went through all of it save for a few yards for future use. Note that the fabric I purchased matched my NOS seat covers perfectly and also an old set of seats I had that still had EOM houndstooth in them. So, I knew I had the real deal.
Unfortunately the OEM fabric ran out, so I then found a supplier in Germany (there's also one in Switzerland with the same fabric) that could get a very nice houndstooth in not only blk/white, but also tan/black/white, and green/blk/white. Several of you here have this fabric in your seats now. It's a gorgeous fabric.
However... there wasn't any of the other colors available...including the brown/blk/white, or the red(wine)/blk white. I also felt that the fabric I had been purchasing was a little flat as well...not really noticeable to everyone, but when you have had OEM available, you realize how it should look.
So, I decided to go out and make my own. Larry Chester tried this in the past, (I provided him with some OE fabric) and he came back with a beautiful cloth with the exception that it got greyed through in the white portion, and the fabric became a little over "felted".
After months of searching worldwide, I found a small mill that would at least try do this for me in small enough batches. Most mills want HUGE minimum yardage, Pendleton etc. was like hundreds of yards per color with 1,000 total yards minimum. Please note that in my day job that I work in the wholesale apparel industry, so I know a fair amount about fabric development and production. The development fees, test "blanket" fees etc were exhorbitant with most mills. In any event after finding the mill, we embarked on trying to duplicate the original fabric. We deconstructed all the fabrics I had including those off of some of the pages of the factory fabric books (oh well....), and found the correct construction, the right number of yarns for the "warp and weft" Next we had to find the right yarn count for the size of the houndstooth, colors, lab dip the correct colors etc. Interestingly we found that the size of the patten varied a little from swatch to swatch from Porsche... my mill has advised me that this happens most usually through the felting/finishing as the fabric shrinks during this process. (you will see that the wine swatch sizing looks just slightly "off" from the green swatch, and was a result of different amounts of time in the felting/finishing process, this will be held to a constant during our production "run").
After many test "blankets" we've come up with the right product. It's literal description is "Very Fine 100% Merino wool" from Australia. It's been felted/finished to give the proper loft and fuzziness to the fabric. I've loomed from some test yarn enough in a correct green/blk/white to do a whole seat, and enough in a wine/blk/white to do a seat back.
Tony will be showing these pieces at the LA lit show.
Next up is color finalization. We've got correct yarn now (or ordered) to do all the colors Porsche offered and then some. According to my books there was:
White/blk
Green/blk/white
Red/blk white
Tan/blk/white
Brown/blk/white
We know there is a huge interest in the red/blk/white. We found that Porsche used a red/blk/white in conjunction with both wine vinyl/leather and red vinyl/leather, as well as with other colors of leather and vinyl. We also found through some of our test yarn that a wine/blk/white houndstooth looks absolutely incredible against a wine leather/vinyl. So we will be offering both wine/blk/white, and the original red/blk/white houndstooth.
Here's a picture of the green/blk/white cloth, and the wine/blk/white cloth.
I'll have all colors available in the next couple of months as we are still receiving the correct custom yarn colors and I have to book the time on the looms. All of the fabrics will be available exclusively through Tony initially. Pricing hasn't quite been finalized yet, but it will be competetive with all the fabrics currently out there.
Hope you like it, it's been quite a haul in time and $$ to develop this.
Note that we will also be able to do some custom houndstooth as well, there are some great "stock" yarn colors offered including a gorgeous blue that would look great loomed into black and white, and laid next to a blue leather.
I'm personally going to do a set of red Recaro racing buckets with red/blk/white inserts and do those with the rest of a red vinyl interior and swap it into my gulf blue 67S just for kicks. There's many car colors that will look great with a red or wine combination of interior, including silver, black, white, blue, etc.
cheers,
Eric
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