Fun With Leather

 

I bought a tutorial for this cute little satchel from Karamel Leatherwork on Etsy.  I was able to find an inexpensive set of leatherworking tools on Wayfair and some cheap leather scraps at Joann.  It was a wonderful, detailed tutorial and that got me started.  Then I ordered some gorgeous lambskin scraps from The Leather Guy.  These scraps were beautiful colors, thin, soft, and generously sized.  Here's what came next.  

The tan bag and the purple bag were stitched by hand the way the tutorial taught me.  My little blue version of a Kelly bag was stitched on my sewing machine because I discovered that the thread really needs to match the leather in order to look good.  I am searching for some better hardware for the Kelly bag but for this one I used a couple of ribbon end crimps with the loops overlapped and a gold bead added in the center.  Bag patterns are pretty easy to draft on graph paper and Pinterest is a great source of ideas.  For lambskin you can simply trace around the pattern on the back of with leather with a pen and cut out with scissors.  I tried cutting the thin strips unsuccessfully with a knife, and found that my rotary cutter did a great job of getting me even straight little strips.  

Week 3-Leather, Macrame and Silver

The theme for this week was Mixed Media so I decided to try working with leather cord. Forty years ago in college I made the obligatory macrame plant hanger but haven't done it since. Thanks to the internet I was able to refresh my memory on how to do a square knot. I started with the silver center which is a doodad that's been hanging out in my spare parts box for ages. The challenge was doing something with four cord ends on each side and the web wasn't much help there. I was able to weave a couple of them in and I used the other two to knot the clasp on. I did end up using some Duco cement to secure the knots. So far, so good.