Leather craft!

G'day fellow Bloggers....

Nb - This post is on work that was covered from January 2012 in my Term 2 of Form 3......

Alright, so now we move into a very exciting area, i.e. leather craft. As you may have guessed leather craft involves crafting various items out of leather. Now, I best say before-hand that this topic rightfully requires genuine leather for one to call it LEATHER craft. However I was not fortunate enough to get my hands on any leather, and as such Mrs. Davis allowed me and those who were equally unfortunate, to replace the leather, with leatherette (artificial leather).

What do you ask that I crafted out of leather? there were actually a variety of options to chose, from simple purses, to leather handbags and everything in between. However i finally decided to make a wallet for my piece. So too did many other students, if not all. Mrs. Davis, having understood that it was a unanimous decision, she decides that she would instruct us all on exactly how to make the wallet:-

To get started, I'll explain the various techniques associated with leather craft, or leatherette craft for that matter:-

1. Punching - this techniques involves using a simple leather punch, to bore holes through sheets of leather for either lacing or decoration.
2. Lacing - using laces to bind individual parts of an item
3. Carving - using a template and swivel knife to crate embossed patterns in the leather
4. Stamping - involves the use of shaped stamps to create an imprint onto a leather surface, often by striking the stamps with a mallet.
5. Appliqué - Sticking or stitching smaller ornaments onto the already made item.

The first step in making the wallet, is to make a template out of normal A4 paper. The out-line of the template should look something like the below picture:-

Just fold on the dotted lines.

You may notice that the corners and edges of the template are spliced. This technique is known as mitering. Mitering is simply cutting the corners of a medium at a 45 degree angle. In this case we have mitered the edges of the paper so that when they fold, they don't lap over each other.


If you want to add additional pockets to the inside of the wallet you will have to cut out more templates like the pictures shown below, and stitch them onto the wallet before you stitch up the sides.

Again, just fold on the dotted lines.

Now, use your templates to cut out the individual pieces of your wallet from the sheet of leatherette.

Before you begin to sew, you may want to attach a piece of velvet to the raw inside of the wallet to cover it up. It makes it look more professional.

Time to sew up the wallet. Sewing is rather tedious, and, if your are doing this for the first time (like i did) you are bound to stick your fingers with the needles a what lot (and potentially get blood poisoning in the process). I advise you to practise a bit before you attempt sewing the wallet.

There are many differed types of stitches and I also advise that you try them all. here are a few commonly used stitches:-

Choose which stitch you want to use and sew the wallet together. First sew the inner pockets (if you have any), then sew the sides up after folding them inwards where the dotted lines would be.

Nb- You can also punch holes with a leather puncher (or even a paper puncher) and lace the wallet together! This is a faster process, but must be done neatly if you want it to come out good.

And that is pretty much it! I did the exact same thing as stated above and it came out rather well:-

Despite the holes that these hours of stitching put into my fingers,  it was really fun to do something like this for the first time, (and hopefully the last).

Leather craft isn't my speciality, but it's never bad to try new things once in a while!

Until next time fellow bloggers..........