Budget Tips: Free Fabric for Upholstery + Making Money

There is an endless supply of waste filling landfills with couches, electronics, car parts, and all kinds of stuff. When I had no job, I would simply drive around for two hours and make $50. Not scrapping - picking up electronics! You know that flat screen TV that's being thrown out? It probably doesn't work, right? You will be surprised that half of them actually do work. People have such a small regard for money that they will throw out a good one because they just got a bigger one! Thanks for the $50.

There's scrapping aswell but it requires a lot more work for the payoff. However, if you have a truck, you can do both. Throw the electronics and stuff in the cabin and throw the metal in the bed of your truck. If you know where to look and what to look for - something you will pick up on quickly - you can make a good $150 on a good night.

It helped me when I was dead broke. The price of metal has dropped so it's important to be able to find those good spots. Actually, many have given up on scrapping altogether so there's a flipside - there's more metal to be found. In suburbia, driving through two blocks, I saw two refrigerators and two washers and/or dryers in one morning. There seems to always be metal out on trash days but you have to load up your truck pretty high.

I still do this from time to time (not scrapping but picking up expensive items) but I have discovered something that made me real happy. The fact is that some of the couches people throw out have perfectly good leather. Real leather, too, not just pleather - also anything from microfiber to nice thick fabric. One big couch is enough for a small car. A big couch and a loveseat is what you're gonna need to do a big car. You can always go two-tone and mix in other fabrics to make up for it.

Without further ado, this is the nice real leather I just found

That's enough for a back seat or two front seats. You can tell it's leather because it's hard to cut.

When you can, don't cut your pieces. It's best to cut the stitching and literally rip the pieces out. You will get stuck in corners. Get your knife out and cut the stitching before you keep going. The big piece is the part you sit on on a sofa with the armrests aswell. This way you get a little more fabric and also some edges already have holes which is nice. Sometimes you can match them.

I found a very nice cloth one. Most cloth couches use pretty bad fabric and are ripped up before they get thrown out. I did find one, however, that used a very durable cloth that reminded me of the cloth seats in a 2002 Silverado. That bench never tore.

The best part about this fabric is that the three cushions in the middle had a zipper on the back. That not only allows me to simply unzip it and take it off but it will also slide on top of seats. Sometimes perfectly; sometimes you have to modify them to fit. But it saves you a ton of time creating the top piece of a front seat. You can do the same trick with cushions by cutting only one side and taking everything out, allowing you to slip it over a seat.

This cloth also reminds of of the interior of Toyota Celsiors. I might try to do something with this cloth... It's too nice.

The last piece I'm gonna share with you today is something that would go great in a two-tone interior.

Just perfect white leather. I mean look at that - I haven't even cleaned it yet.

See, when you don't have enough of one fabric to do a whole car, use two! You can use vinyl paint and just make them the same color throughout or you can go two-tone like I've been saying.

Basically you would use the bigger amount of leather - the brown in this case - for the main things while using the white for trim. As an example, you could make the center console leather in an LS400 white, re-wrap the steering wheel in white, incorporate patches of white into the brown seats.

Just think about how you want it look and what will look good and flow. Maybe a nice line running down the middle going towards the white center console or maybe have white patches on both sides where two people would be sitting. You can have the backrest brown, seat white... The options are endless.

The above is technically a seat cover. It has specific attachments to hook it into an LS400 backseat turning it into a bench seat. Here, the bottom is cloth. In Florida it gets really hot and you do not want to sit on hot leather, trust me. Plus it actually looks pretty cool.

This specific car has a cloth center console and front seats to give it that flow. It was also supposed to receive black leather on the backs of the front seats but unfortunately, I had to let the car go for Lexy 2.

I hope this gives you guys some ideas on both how to get the material for upholstery but make some money doing it to buy the rest of the stuff you need. There is a tutorial on upholstery on this website so make sure you read it if you are interested in learning. It's simple to learn, hard to master. It's also challenging and can be extremely rewarding and fulfilling.