Headliner

Headliners are a piece of fabric attached to the roof of a vehicle, they are there to look pretty and hide things such as wiring and sound deadening materials.

As with all trim finishing the colour and fabric can really change the look of your vehicle. No pressure right?

This is one of the items that I want to DIY. Plain white seemed so boring to me, a pattern would lighten up the interior and let me infuse some Supernatural into the car.

First thing's first: the pattern. Finding measurements for a headlining on the internet was surprisingly difficult and the one currently in my car was ripped in a number of places making patterning from it difficult. I was thinking I might have to get that plain white one after all (sad panda).

A lovely person on the AusMini forum gave me measurements from his Mini K headlining:

He gave me a fantastic amount of information which really kick-started this project.

After I got the measurements, I made a measurement mock-up (a long strip of fabric with the measurements marked on it) then a full mock-up once the first one fit. The full mock-up is full sized and has the tabs sewn into it. One tab is missing, for one of the white headliner rods, because that's where the sunroof is. I'm still debating if I'm going to sew a line of stitching to 'fake' a tab at that point. P.S. cheap sheets from Kmart are great for mock-ups. A king single is more then big enough to mock-up an entire mini headlining.

Below is a photo of the full mock-up:

The next stage for the mock-up is to dry fit it to the car, I'll get to that later.

Stage two: the cute pattern.

So there's a website called Spoonflower.com that allows artists to create their own designs to be printed on a bunch of different fabrics. But I'm picky, nothing really spoke to me. Therefore I created my own.

Marvel in my design prowess...

A smattering of Supernatural quotes, images and feelings on a white background. Lovely.

Next question: what fabric to print it on? I chose canvas. It's robust and took the print well. A proof print later I'd put in the order the fabric for the 'real deal' headliner. It's currently someplace in the post, it'll get here when it's good and ready.

Last point: budget. DIY is great but it can be expensive some days. The whole point is not to cost more then the commercial product. So lets have a look at my math's for this DIY.

For argument's sake, the commercial headliner I liked costs $330 plus shipping.

The fabric for my headliner is Cypress Cotton Canvas which is $57 per yard (American company), but I waited for their Christmas discount thus the fabric cost $41 per yard. I got two yards to make sure I'd have enough. I also got some other fabrics because US shipping, may as well take advantage and they had super cute Mini fabrics. Shipping is always a problem from the US and cost me $15. In addition I purchased some plain cotton canvas from Spotlight for the tabs, that set me back $11.27 (also taking advantage of some discounts), plus $13 for shipping. C-pillar card backings are usually included in the headliner kits, on their own the cost $59 plus shipping and some trimming will need to be done.

Totals:

• Spoonflower Cypress Cotton Canvas: $82.09.

• Spotlight canvas: $11.27.

• C-pillar card backings: $59.

• Shipping total: $43.24.

• Grand total: $195.60

By that math's I've achieved my objective, the DIY headliner has not cost me more then the commercial product. Winning.

These totals don't include my labour or sewing equipment. I already own the sewing kit, good to go. At some point I'll tot up the hours I've put into this, I suspect it'd vastly increase the total if I was paying someone to create this headliner instead of taking advantage of my own free labour.

Next parts to the project: dry fit the mock-up headliner to my car to check it fits, make any adjustments then create the final product.

To be continued...