houndstooth headliner
 

Well after searching for nearly two years, I finally found some designer houndstooth fabric that's wide enough to do my headliner. Probably not going to start this project until my car is up and running, but it's nice to finally have the materials. I started to lose hope, this stuff is ridiculously difficult to track down. I ended up purchasing 4 1/2 yards of it and it wasn't exactly cheap. It's made by an English designer who is no longer in business called Peacock & Fitch.

Most of the houndstooth fabrics I've came across were either too narrow to cover the headliner in one piece, or they've been the wrong color combo. You see a lot of houndstooth styles in the more modern two-tone pattern. However, I was going for the classic "Sherlock Holmes, Polo cologne, fancy pocket watch, leather keychain attached to a Jaguar key" look. This fabric is made of wool and is actual upholstry fabric. Most of the other stuff I've seen was poly-cotton blend suiting fabric. I should have more than enough to do my headliner, door card inserts, vader inserts, A and C pillars and maybe the parcel shelf. Of course, if I do the vaders, and rear seats, I'll also do tan leather bolsters. Thoughts, suggestions?

http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q...6/CIMG5436.jpg
http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q...6/CIMG5446.jpg
http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q...6/CIMG5452.jpg

and oh yeah, I made this a while ago:
http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q...oundstooth.jpg

Cool... I like the red stripe in the pattern. That makes it a little more interesting than a 2-tone would be. However, it might make it a bitch to line up.

So, you're planning to do the door panels, etc. too? That might end up looking a little bit "too busy" once you get the car full of that pattern, if that makes sense.

One other thing... I'm going to predict that you'll have a huge headache when it comes time to lay out the templates and cut the individual sections from the roll of cloth. I say this because I know that if it were ME doing this, I would want the placement of the red stripes to be mirrored on the parts that there are two of, e.g. the door panels, rear side panels, etc. And given that you're more O.C. than I am... heh heh heh :-D

Yeah, I noticed that the red really stands out too. It's actually an equally repeating patern of: moss, avocado, merlot, black, pecan and olive. These names were cut & pasted:tongue: If anything, the red, excuse me "merlot" stripes should help in lining it up. I really wasn't thinking about that though. I'm just more concerned that it doesn't look wavy, meaning that the rows of "M's" are straight and not stretched or distorted. I'm also going to take special note and use the same side of the fabric for everything. If you flip it over, the pattern is reversed and the M's will be leaning in the opposite direction.

Since my carpet and plastic interior parts are black, I think you're right about the door cards and stuff being "too busy". I'll probably do the door panel inserts in the same tan leather as the vader and rear seat bolsters as well as the shift boot, parking brake boot and possibly the upper dash and rear parcel shelf. I definitely want to do houndstooth inserts on the vaders though. I loved the way the stock cloth/leather sport seats felt, especially in the summer when wearing shorts and shirtless. So maybe just houndstooth on the healiner, A & C pillars and front and rear seat inserts?

This pic shows the contrast of black carpet, door panels and plastic pieces with lighter colored inserts:
http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q...6/902f733a.jpg

^^^But that leather is more of a cream color while I was thinking more along the lines of tan or modena:
http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o...d/CIMG5121.jpg
http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o...240/modena.jpg

That's going to look SWEET!!!

That is some suuu-weeet material, Jess. Me likey. Personally, I think that would look good on seat inserts with black leather, but not sure what your interior color is. I think that tan or cream may work, as long as there is sufficient contrast and the colors are not too close to each other. It looks like it will wear very well. Not sure how that would look (or how easy it would be due to the curves/insets) on the parcel shelf, but I'm always amazed with what people can do with upholstery.

I'm still trying to figure out what to do with my upholstery- the leather on my vaders is getting worse by the day, but I need to take care of mechanical stuff first. I think I may just mimic the existing cream/sandgray interior pattern.

Thanks Ralliart10 & Zoner, my vaders really need to be reupholstered anyway. Some parts of the stitching was worn and the previous owner redyed right over the messed up stitching. It looks really bad. My vaders and rear seat are currently dove grey, and the rest of the interior is black('97 318ti sport) but I love the look of the custom black and tan interior and I think the houndstooth will give it nice classic "e30" touch.

quick photoshop

that should look pretty awesome, we might get a better idea of what you're planning if you actually knew how to photoshop but I won't split hairs :tongue:

In my own defense, I only have MS Paint to work with:redface:


Better?:biggrin:

Dude... download GIMP, it's free, geez LOL

And yeah... looks a lot better! the houndstooth pattern will be smaller though, right?

Speaking of Modena... there's a full Modena interior for sale here locally. No idea what they're asking for it though.

that gives us a better idea :tongue:

are you planning on leaving the M stripes on it? I think it might look better without them personally

I have an older version of photoshop somewhere, just haven't gotten around to installing it yet. Not sure if it'll work for Vista, but if not I'll give GIMP a try.

Yeah the houndstooth pattern is smaller. I shrunk the bottom layer before I applied the top layer with the cutout, but I guess I didn't shrink it enough. The problem was that when I was shrinking it, the pattern blended all together and you couldn't really tell it was houndstooth. I was just trying to put the pattern up against the leather color to see how well they flowed. In the end, I think I'll settle for a color in between Modena and Tan. The modena is too orange and the tan is too grey. I'd love to pick up a Modena interior, but I'm in the same boat as you:wink:
I think you're right Brendan. I used to see those stick-on M stripes on ebay, but haven't seen them in a while. I'll keep my old ones and try it both ways. This project is way later down the road. I'm polishing my second set of style 5's ATM, caps arrived yesterday and the centers are on their way here from Massachusets as we speak:biggrin: I'm using my old style 19 barrels, they had a lot of rash, but I've sanded it down and you can't even tell anymore.

Beautiful material, Jess. I'm sure I'm not the only site member who is looking forward to seeing pictures of your car when completed. Take care. John