Last weekend the Sunbrella canopy was removed and taken home for a thorough clean, whilst it was removed this gave Peter the opportunity to clean and polish Moonshine's hard top.
The fish finder and steering wheel cover were also looking a bit sorry for themselves, so I decided to make new covers using some excess Silvertex fabric left over from the wheelhouse upholstery.
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| Fish finder |
A carefully measured paper box template was made ensuring the correct fit for the fish finder, prior to cutting sections of fabric to be sewn together. Rot resistant thread and a heavy duty sewing machine needle were used and the box was finished off with a french seam to catch the hem underneath which in turn gives it a fine upholstered finished look.
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| Camera screen hood |
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| Camera screen hood |
The engine room camera screen also needed a cover and rather than making a bulky box cover a simple hood was required. A long piece of Silvertex measuring 14" x 9 1/4" was cut and the centre of the width was measured to stitch three rows of decorative stitching. A half inch hem was stitched on both sides then the hood was turned the correct way out and provisionally fitted. In situ the bottom hem was turned up by a full inch to accommodate the hem stitch and to ensure the correct fit and additional decorative stitching to match was applied.
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| Cut Silvertex for steering wheel |
We fitted a nice Teleflex steering wheel soon after buying Moonshine and this needs protection from the sun. A custom made cover needed to be made and with the help of the internet to tackle this I found a very useful video on YouTube.
I measured the steering wheel diameter from the top to the bottom edge curves of the wheel. Using this measurement a circle was made on the fabric after finding the centre and marking it out using a pencil and string as a compass.
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| Joining the boxing |
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| Shock cord stitched in place |
For the boxing I needed a 4" width piece of fabric the full circumference of the wheel plus an extra 6". Since I didn't have a full piece I made the box section out of 3 seperate pieces neatly stitched together again using the french seam to neaten the hem underneath.
A 1" hem along the full length was then created and a piece of 5mm shock cord was fed through and fastened in place at one end.
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| Joining the boxing |
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| Catching the hem in place |
The next step was to machine stitch the boxing section to the circle. This was done by joining the underside to the circle top facing upwards and carefully stitched taking time to create the curve. Once this was done the cover was turned the correct way out and a neat row of stitching was sewn onto the boxing section to catch the hem in place.
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| Neat joints |
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| Nearly finished |
Once aboard Moonshine the new cover could be fitted and the shock cord tensioned and stitched in place.
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| End result |
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| End result |
We are very pleased with the end result, especially with the steering wheel cover and camera hood. The fish finder cover was very tricky and doesn't look as professional a finish to the other covers but considering these were made using a domestic sewing machine the end results are good enough, and I do not envisage having to renew these for a very long time.
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