Nevermind Netflix--I'm Too Busy Making Leather Stuff!

I recently had some surgery that requires some time off work to recuperate (and it's going just fine).  I had originally planned to use the time to catch up on all the various TV series that I never get around to watching during my regular life: Game of Thrones, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and so on.  I had a list all lined up. Yeah, so much for that idea!  The wi-fi isn't good enough, and there are just too many other things that interest me.

Among other things, my older daughter and a friend got me hooked on Pinterest.  Now I'm wondering how I ever lived without it, and how I will live without spending hours on it after I go back to work!  So much inspiration!  Dyeing, leatherwork, fashion, shoes... I've been caught in a frenzy of wanting to pin more things and wanting to run off and do a project right away based on something I see.  I was really drooling over the amazing Russian leatherwork at kooc.livejournal.com.

I have a leather stash like some of my quilting friends have a fabric stash (yes, I've got one of those too...), and I figured I should use some of it.  Since my favorite color is blue, I have a good selection of blue leathers, as well as other colors.  A lot of it is upholstery leather, odd-lot whole hides that appealed to me even if I didn't have a specific project in mind for them.

I thought I'd try out making a purse with a couple of the techniques I saw in the Russian bags (especially this one).  Specifically, I wanted to try out lacing and hand stitching as well as the cut-out techniques, all techniques I haven't used in previous projects.

I made a pattern for my purse.  I wanted the bag itself to be simple since the decoration would get most of the work.  I cut one "figure-8" piece (the pattern is two same-size circles overlapping like a Venn diagram), two "half-8" pieces that were half of the figure-8 piece (circles missing top sections), and a rectangular strip to form the gusset section of the purse.  One of those half-8 pieces is a gold-dusted leather that will peek through the cutouts of the front flap of the figure-8.

The Design

I can't ever make a "creative" project exactly like somebody else's (even if I had the skill of the Russian leatherworker!), so I did my own design of a sky with clouds.  I used a half-inch drive punch to make the cloud cut-outs, and I cut slits in the leather in a fan design to create the sun rays.

The Clasp

A while back I had ordered a bunch of strong and small neodymium magnets from K&J Magnetics for some other project that I had then abandoned, so I used some of those to make a hidden magnetic clasp to hold the bag closed.   I initially sewed one magnet between the blue and gold leathers on the front flap (adding the gold "sun" piece on top to hide that stitching).

I sewed the lines around the clouds and the little bird motifs in lockstitch using a sewing awl after watching an instructional video on YouTube (have I mentioned that I LOVE YouTube for learning how to do things?). Lockstitch is the same type of stitch a regular sewing machine makes.  I also used some contact glue between the cut-out blue leather and the gold piece to hold everything in place more firmly.

I glued and sewed the matching magnet under the moon motif on the inner front piece.

When I got those done, I found that the magnetic clasp hardly did anything.  There was too much leather between the magnets.  I skived down some of the leather between the magnets, but it wasn't enough to help much.  I then took those pieces back apart and added another magnet to each side (so 2 neodymium 3/4" x 3/8" x 1/32" block magnets on each side).  It works, but it doesn't have the reassuring "click" of those magnetic clasps where one piece clicks into the other.  On the good side, it doesn't show at all, and the magnet does have the handy advantage of holding my metal lacing needle for me!

The Lacing

I glued the gusset panel to the front and back pieces, and then it was time for the lacing step.  Back to YouTube for a lacing video!  I followed that video, tried it on a practice piece with my lace and lacing needle, and off I went to the real thing.  I used "Superior Calf Lace" from Tandy Leather Factory for this.

I really like the double loop lacing style.  However, if I were to do this again, I wouldn't use the brown color (too jarring a contrast), and I would only do the double-loop lacing on the flap.  The double-loop lacing is too stiff for the upholstery leather body of the bag, and it juts straight out from the gusset panel, making an odd raised rim around the front and back of the bag body, though it is less obvious if the bag is full (which it will be!).

For the strap, I glued two strips of the leather back-to-back, riveted it onto the sides of the gusset, and added a strap buckle and keeper loop.

Next?

So now I've got a fancy new cross-body bag, and I've learned some new techniques!  I've still got some more time before I can go back to work, though.  Hmm, what should I do for my next project?  Back to Pinterest!

P.S.

If you want to find me on Pinterest, I'm the Sara Woodhull with a profile picture of two dogs wearing tie-dye (of course)!

Leather, Zippers, Buckles, and Straps--It's Not What You Think

Oh wow, has it really been over four years since my last post to this blog?  I haven't stopped making things, but I have been busy.  As I mentioned in this blog previously, I had been taking a long leave of absence from work just because I needed a break.  At some point I went back to my previous job (surprising many coworkers who thought I'd never come back), and I got back to writing professionally.  As a product manager, I write presentations, white papers, documentation, lots of explanatory emails, and blog entries for a corporate blog, so my general urge to write is pretty well satisfied.

But enough about me...

My most recent project was a leather fanny pack for my older daughter.  Like me, she likes to keep her hands free, so she avoids carrying purses.  She likes leather fanny packs instead.  She has had a couple that worked pretty well for her, but she breaks the zippers on them because she stuffs them too full.  So this time, instead of just buying her a new one (leather fanny packs are not cheap, even if you can find one you like!), I decided to make her one myself.

One of her favorite fanny packs was from Libaire, a company in Berkeley, CA (search libaire.net for fanny pack).  It's a great pack, elegant and well made of unlined sturdy leather, but she overstuffed it and eventually broke the zipper.  Here is the original:

I copied the general design of the Libaire pack with its four zipper pockets, but I modified it, of course.  I made a paper pattern for it that was a bit bigger in all dimensions.  I also planned to add a lining to the main section of the bag that would include a few organizer pockets.  My daughter has a set of stuff she always carries, such as headphones, highlighters, and a small pencil case, so I wanted to tailor the pockets just for her.

For materials I used four sturdy zippers I had salvaged from old jackets and backpacks, along with the remains of the same crocodile-embossed cowhide I used for a previous iPod case.  I had fabric scraps left over from making a slip, so I used those for the lining.  Once I made the pattern and cut out all the pieces for the new pouch and the lining, I had a nice pile of bits.

My mom recently gave me her old industrial sewing machine.  It's a Bernina 217, almost 50 years old, and it can sew through pretty much anything.  It has a heavy-duty clutch motor underneath the table, and the motor stays on, humming, the entire time you are working at the machine.  As I was working on the project, I realized that the sound makes me feel warm and secure--I have a happy association with the humming sound from all the times my mom would work at the machine while I was playing nearby, or in bed, when I was a kid.  

Putting in zippers is one of the early steps in fanny pack construction.  I started by sewing the zippers into their respective panels (front, top, and the two triangular side pockets).

For the side pockets, I discovered that it was important for the little metal clamp at the closed end of the zipper (the top end in the picture above) to be on the same side of the seam as the rest of the zipper (so that there were no zipper teeth or clamp in the seam allowance, only the fabric tape part of the zipper).  When you turn it right side out, you cannot bend the zipper itself, but the tape can bend.  I sewed the polypropylene webbing into the pockets as well at this point.  Here are the zipper pocket pieces before and after turning right side out through the zipper opening.

I sewed the triangle pockets onto the back panel of the pack, making sure the zipper slide was not hanging out in the seam allowance.  The two triangle pockets are connected by the webbing strap at this point.  Once the triangle pockets were sewn on, I could cut off the excess zipper length.

I assembled the lining separately.  I made the pockets to fit specific items she carries.

And then a miracle happened...

Once all the sub-assemblies were assembled, I sewed the whole thing together to the accompaniment of much swearing and a bit of rework.  It seemed like a Moebius bag, and I'm not quite sure how it actually finally went together.  I'll probably have to reverse-engineer it to make another one!  At the very end, I cut the webbing strap and sewed on the buckle and slider.  Here is the finished bag:

 Here is a view of the lining with organizer pockets in the main section:

Here is the fanny pack in use.  Stuffed, of course!

And of course, the obligatory dog shot with Lacey and Tulip:

Tulip figured she'd better make sure there weren't any goodies lurking in the bag.  Something sure smelled interesting in there!

Big Wide Brown Sandals

Everyone's feet are different, but some feet are more "different" than others in a world where standardization and mass production are the norm. Very wide flat feet, for example, are hard to fit in standard shoe sizes, so they are good candidates for custom sandals. And since the particular feet in question belong to my husband, they are perfect candidates for my sandal experimentation.

Padding

I had tried, unsuccessfully, to find the padding that Michael of Island Sandals uses. Rob at Tandy suggested I try using a blue foam sleeping bag pad, which made sense to me, so I got one at REI and started hacking it up.

Once I had cut the strap holes and finished the top piece (Tandy Eco-Flo dye, Bison Brown followed by Carnauba Creme finish), I glued the blue foam to the top piece with Fast-bond 30 and wrapped the straps around the foam through the holes, as seen below:

I cut the sole pieces a bit oversized so I would have room for stitching and trimming later.

I'm working with quite thick leather again, like I did for my first pair of sandals: 13-15 oz. saddle skirting for the sole bottoms, with an extra layer for the heels. I used 6-7 oz. leather for the upper layer of the shoe, and 10-11 oz. leather for the straps (no way is he going to wear through these straps!). In hindsight, I should have used thinner leather for the straps, maybe 6-7 or 8-9 oz., because these straps are awfully thick, stiff, and bulky. Besides, the nice thing about the free-floating straps (that is, they are not permanently fastened to the sole anywhere so they can be infinitely adjusted) is that they are relatively easy to replace if they wear out or break.

I glued the top sole to the bottom sole (carefully not gluing where the straps are), then used a drill press with a small bit (around 1/16") to drill the holes around the edge. It worked pretty well, so long as I kept the straps out of the way! It was definitely easier than holding a power drill by hand like I did for my daughter's thong sandals.

Stitching by hand around the edges took a while, but I eventually finished them.

I like the wood-grained appearance of the hand-dyed leather. I got that by using a small paintbrush to apply the dye to the upper sole pieces.

Sole Bottoms

I glued a layer of SoleTech 3.5 onto the front part of the bottom, and glued a section of rubber chevron-patterned soling (also ordered from Louis Birns & Sons) onto the heels, as in the picture below:

When I took the picture above, my husband had already been wearing the sandals for a while (several months), so some wear is visible on the soles. The SoleTech 3.5 is a little too thin and dainty for this purpose. When he eventually wears all the way through it, I'll replace it with more of the chevron soling. Meanwhile, the sleeping-bag pad foam has held up pretty well so far and is still pretty resilient.

Lacey Too?

Lacey wants to know when I'll be making a pair of shoes for her, but she points out that she has much daintier little feet than my husband!

Another Case for an iPod Touch

As expected, my younger daughter got an iPod Touch too, and of course she needed a case before we went on vacation. I made her a case similar to her sister's case, with a few modifications now that the first one has been in service for a bit.

I used some alligator-grain embossed leather from Tandy. It was about the same thickness as the black leather I used for the other case, so this time I glued a layer of the black onto the front piece for extra stiffness. This time I also sewed the loop side of the Velcro onto the pocket before putting the case together.

As before, I stitched around the main screen opening.

For the previous case, the front and back pieces were about the same width. This time I want the seam to be more to the front of the iPod, so I made the front piece narrower and the back piece wider. The seam at the bottom of the picture is where the pocket is sewed to the back piece.

Here is the pocket sewed to the back. The pocket opening is in the center of the picture.

Next I sewed the back to the front.

I did the strap the same way I did it on the previous case, with fleece binding, plastic twine, and a buckle. I opened the binding, sewed one side to the front of the case, then closed the binding over the case edge and sewed the back of the binding on (through all the layers including the front part of the binding).

Like before, I trimmed the flaps to fit once the case was all sewed together.

I made the pocket a bit bigger this time so it would be easier to put the headset in.

It's a little easier to see the flap construction on the patterned brown leather.

Another "quick" project (though it still took me several hours). Done!

A Touching Case for an iPod Touch

The latest project was a pretty quick one: a carrier for an Apple iPod Touch for my daughter. I had a deadline, since she was about to go off on a school trip and wanted to bring it with her. It needed a shoulder strap that would go across the chest so it would be easy to access but hard to lose.

I started by making a pattern/prototype of paper towel and Scotch tape (some of my favorite prototyping supplies).

I got some Wrights extra-wide (half inch wide) double-fold fleece binding for the strap so the strap would be soft against the skin. I reinforced it with the type of cheap plastic twine people use to tie purchases to car racks at IKEA. This piece actually came from my local Tandy store, where it had been used to tie up one of my large pieces of leather so I could get it home in my car! Yeah, I almost never throw anything away...

Here is the twine being stitched into the binding. That's a "walking foot" on the machine, which helps when sewing through multiple layers.

I cut out a few scraps of the soft black leather left over from my Sonotube-and-leatherTV chair. I used my sewing machine and heavy polyester thread to stitch a reinforcing outline for the iPod screen and the menu button as well as for the power cord and headset holes.

The crescent of stitching on the left was just for testing. It will be cut off later. Here is the right side of the leather:

I wanted a pocket for the case to hold the iPod headset when it wasn't being used, so I sewed a pocket piece onto the back and stitched the back to the front:

I cut out the rectangle for the screen and the slot at the bottom for the cord.

I sewed the sides of the case together using the machine, and then I sewed the fleece binding strap onto the sides of the case. Once the pieces were all together, I adjusted the fit and cut off the excess leather from the cover flap and the center tab (top of the front piece).

I had been planning to attach snaps to the tab and cover to hold the case closed, but after I had put the case together, I thought of using hook-and-loop fasteners (Velcro) instead. My daughter liked that idea. Since I had already sewed the pocket on, I stitched a strip of the loop part onto the pocket by hand. I used my sewing machine to sew the hook parts onto the center tab and the end of the cover.

The center tab (right at the top of the iPod) in the picture above fits through a slot in the back of the case and then holds the headset pocket closed. Note that I did not cut out a hole for the menu button at the bottom of the iPod. The stitching there is just to provide a tactile indication of the button location, since the leather is soft and thin enough to allow the button to be pressed right through the leather.


The cover flap folds completely down over the front of the iPod and up around the bottom of the back, covering the hole for the cords and fastening to the Velcro on the pocket back.


I cut up a recycled white plastic pill bottle to get a fairly stiff plastic rectangle, then I put some notches on it to make a "bobbin" for winding the headset around. The bobbin and headset fit nicely into the pocket on the back. Here you can also see the Velcro loop piece sewn onto the pocket:

Here is the finished case. My daughter wears it with the screen facing her body so it's easier to read the iPod without removing the case. I added a plastic buckle (left over from previous experiments with making tie-dyed dog collars!) to the strap so it would be adjustable and easy to take off.

The case seems to be a hit: my daughter has been wearing it around the house ever since I gave it to her, and her younger sister has already put in her request for one of her own!

And just to be complete, here's a completely gratuitous picture of Lacey. She wasn't interested in wearing the iPod case since my daughter wouldn't share the headset...

The (First) Leather iPhone Case

The pricey-but-cheap plastic case I bought for my iPhone broke recently, and I've been doing some shaping of leather lately, so I made a prototype leather case for my phone. Out of pure laziness, I wanted to avoid doing any stitching, so I experimented with a one-piece design for my new case.

I started with a rectangle of 3-5 ounce thickness vegetable-tanned leather I had left over from other projects, wet it in water until it was thoroughly soaked, and wrapped it around the broken plastic iPhone case to start shaping it. I pulled it tight around the corners. I cut slits in the leather to make it fit better, figuring that I would cut away a lot of excess leather later after it had dried in shape.


I used thin rubber bands to hold it together while it dried, which took about two days (especially where there were multiple layers).


Once it was dried, I cut back the excess material until it was approximately the right form to allow access to all the buttons and other iPhone controls, and I added segma snaps from Tandy.


The outside of the leather was smooth, and I wanted a bit more gripping ability, so I used my saddlemaker's groover to roughly scrape some grooves in the back of the case:


Since I had initially formed the leather case around the plastic case, the leather case wasn't as close fitting as I wanted. I wet it a bit (not completely soaked this time) and wrapped it around the actual iPhone, and let it dry out again overnight.


Here is the case after I had been using it for a few days and snipping off bits of it to get better access to the screen and reduce the excess leather.


Here it is unfolded. Note that the leather around the corners of the phone has been stretched and formed to fit the curves of the phone, so this isn't a flat piece of leather.


Review of the Prototype

Since this was simply a quick-and-dirty prototype to see if I could make a usable one-piece case, I didn't bother putting any color or finish on it. Once I cut slots and holes for the charger plug, microphones, camera, headphone jack, power button, sound and volume controls, the case was significantly weakened (especially by the slot for the charger). The design held the phone sufficiently well for being carried in my pocket, but I'm not sure I'd feel secure enough to have it hanging from my belt.

For the next try, I won't cut holes for the power button or the volume control rocker switch. If the leather is thin enough, I can push those buttons right through the leather without having to weaken the case as much.

It turned out that the upper snap and strap interfered with the proximity detectors on the iPhone, so the screen would go blank and unresponsive even when I pulled the phone away from my ear. This was a showstopper for the snapped front-opening design.

On to the next prototype!