I got back working on the carpet this week and I must say it was not real fun working in 100 degree heat. One of the things I decided in the beginning was that I was going to do binding on the carpet. Everything that I have done is based on bits and pieces that I have read, "no expert here". With binding, the carpet that is under the binding piece should extend an inch or so under, so your inside corners are covered. See the picture at the back wall where it meets the floor. This process of doing the binding would seem to me to be more labor intensive as you can't glue and then cut. You have to place and mark and cut over and over until it's perfect and the sew in the binding, and then glue in place accurately. The patterns I made really helped here.
BINDING ISSUES
My wife and I ran into a few problems with the binding that I need to mention in case you try this. We tested sewing the carpet with my wife's sewing machine and it seemed to work without any problems. When we actaully started sewing the binding on we ran into some problems with missing stiches. This resulted in us doing a lot of testing with two binding methods and two types of binding. See picture below. As it turns out the binding I purchased with the carpet had on folded over and glued edge on one side for the finished edge. You can also cut 2" wide strips of binding from vinyl that is the same material as your seats and dash. However if it is not sewn close to the edge it can curl over exposing the cut edge over time. In the end we found that our machine was the problem with the standard single binding stich, as it had to sew through three layers of binding plus the carpet. When we used a piece of scrap from the dash it worked fine. The folded and glued edge was just to hard and thick. You also must have a machine with a walking foot, which we had.
We also tested two types of binding stiches with scraps from the dash. In the picture the one on the left is a hidden stich and the right is a standard stich. The hidden stich requires twice as much sewing. It would most likely take another yard of material. We are still deciding on having someone sew on the binding we have with an industrial machine or buy some more dash vinyl and do the hidden stich.
A word of caution when cutting cut pile carpet. Because it was so hot in the garage my wife brought out a fan. My wife then helped me for a few hours and then later she started getting sick. Over the next day we realized when the fan was on the cut fibers would get in the air and she quickly bagan to have breathing problems. I had coughed a few times at night but didn't think much of it until we realized what was happening. Those small cut fibers can just float in the air.
THREAD
For the binding we are using Coats & Clark UV polyester outdoor living thread. It is a size 67 and just about impossible to break. Size 69 is just about the largest you can use in a home sewing machine.
SEAMS
Because of the way I decided to run the carpet on the tunnel and the odd angles of the B&B I ended up having to make one seam on the left tunnel front side. I tried using a heat gun to shape it, but it just didn't work. In the end I ended up cutting a 3 1/2" pie shape out. We did some testing and found that cutting the mating sides with a razor and straight edge worked pretty good. I then held the sides together really tight while my wife put on this miracle tape called EZ Seam from Lowe's. It is really, really, strong and sticky. A lot of B&Bs tunnels are carpeted with a top and two sides using cording on the corners, but I just didn't like the look.
