Sewing

Our boat came with nice coushions but they did not fit well. We assume they came off another westsail with a curved dining area (on the port side) where our layout is simply straight. Without hesitation we decided to make new ones for the entire boat; this consisted of dining area, seete area, pilot birth (I redesigned this area and ill post the results soon), v-birth port and starboard. Basically it's a big job and my wife has been going at it with the old Pfaff 335 sewing machine we purchased from eBay.

We started this project by making templates of all the areas. We used different types of paper products for these templates and my wife found butcher paper worked the best. Once the patterns were cut my wife took them to a fabric and foam store where they laid-out and cut the foam for her. We also found that a electric bread knife works just as good. The foam we eventually selected is 4" thick and of medium density. We did try other foams and I recall the 3" to thin where others were to hard especially after a night of sleep. Another discovery that we found using the cushions that came with the boat was the little round button heads. These buttons ( I am sure there is a trade name for them ) are difficult to ignore after sleeping on them. They look nice and probably offer support for the entire "foam and fabric" package but, we want comfort. We basically slept on different foams and fabrics for about two weeks until we got a good sense of what to use.

Next my lovely wife went to www.sailright.com looking for fabric swatches but found a great section for design ideas and making sewing patterns for cushions. She says its a fantastic site for all sorts of stuff including pre cut custom sails that are sewn by you. Unfortunately sailright's fabric prices are more than we wanted to pay so my wife found a alternative source. She selected a tan vinyl that will be accompanied with a festive striped vinyl.

Lastly came cutting the fabric using sailright's suggestions and the act of piecing it all together with UV protective thread. The old Paff 335 has been running better than expected and the cushions are taking shape.

Different types of foam

One of the butcher paper patterns

The cut foam.

Measuring the zipper

Paff 335

fabric cut out

V-birth almost complete