I don’t really have an ongoing single project but I do have an ongoing “project” to learn leathercrafting, hopefully one day to be able to have a little sidehustle in making some relatively niche and bespoke things. I’ve been taking things slow for once rather than rushing headlong into it, not buying too much stuff and getting overwhelmed, practicing things over and over and I’m really loving it.

I’ve been posting my journey so far in the Leather Craft community with pictures and stories of all the stuff I’ve made so far.

My latest items that I made just yesterday, a cuff and a small clutch to use the new hardware closures I bought.

By chance I went down to visit them today, I had a day off I had forgotten about that I had to use before the end of March. I brought my stuff with me to ask and they were really pleased to see what I had been doing and even took some pictures for their website!

I was right in what the leather was, it is indeed Badalassi Pueblo, its really nice, I got to see some much bigger cuts of it and I’m keen to make some more from that at some point.

Other than miles most of our stuff is metric anyway, at least legally. Like yeah, we use stones and feet for ‘human’ measurements in speech etc but if you go to the doctors it would be in kilos and metres. There are a few oddities like milk bottles being in pints and beer in pubs but even then you find things like plant milks and bottles/canned beer in litres. The one that really makes no sense is car fuel efficiency. We sell fuel by the litre but measure it in miles per (imperial) gallon - so it doesnt even tie up with American figures.

And Larry Ellison puts money into his charity looking into how to live forever…

Teapigs - https://www.teapigs.co.uk/pages/about-us

I’m going back to the place I got it from soon so I plan to bring some of the things I’ve made or scrap examples to find out what leather it actually is. There are a few that are really nice.

I wish I knew, its from 2kg of scraps and offcuts I grabbed from random boxes. It might be Badalassi Carlo Pueblo.

Thanks :), its probably a bit hard to see but its really just some mildly wobbly edges and its slightly asymmetrical where one stitch line is a bit “tighter” than the other in both how close it fits and how close I cut to the line.

Pretty much, yeah. Soak the top one and stretch, smoosh and massage it to the object with a bone folder (I didn’t have a bone folder yet so I just used some relatively not-too-sharp items I had laying around) then clamp it in place so it can’t change shape and when it dries it will hold that shape. I kind of but didn’t precisely follow this - https://mazeleather.com/4-ways-to-wet-mold-leather/.

Thanks! Its the little 18mm one ❤

Because the community is called “Buy European”?

Based in Connecticut apparently

Not sure, I’ve yet to attempt such a thing. This was rather stretchy and relatively thin leather but I don’t think I could have done it with this.

No divider just yet, buying tools bit by bit so that is all just measured by hand and ruler. These are all pieces for practice atm rather than intentionally making something nice. The leather thickness and thread width haven’t come into it just yet, I’ve literally just got a 2kg bag of leather offcuts so its the luck of the draw if something is thick or thin or in the right colour.

The first one is made with 0.8mm anebraid thread provided by the place I did the workshop at (and almost certainly not done with enough tension) and the second red thread is 1mm cheapo ebay waxed thread to tide me over.

Even the stitching chisels were just the 3.8mm ones that came in the little toolkit I got from the workshop (all of them are done with the same chisels). Essentially yeah, nothing is perfect yet but I don’t intend it to be, my main focus is on skills rather than finished items.

Thank you for the input though!

I originally tried to use Inkscape to make a simple pattern but I found it frustrating to make anything of accurate size. I then decided to have a go with LibreCAD instead and found it far more intuitive to make things accurately. It can ouput to svg, pdf and png as well as using dxf natively. I plan to get a cheap little cnc router to just send a pattern and get something cut out of wood or acrylic.

I’ve been curating a list of UK resources for my own use:

https://stormleather.com/ - Leather
https://identityleathercraft.com/ - Leather, supplies, events, workshops
https://www.jwoodleathers.co.uk/ - Leather
https://www.leathermerchantsussex.co.uk/ - Leather
https://www.jhleather.co.uk/ - Workshops, tutorials
https://www.ebay.co.uk/str/littlebearco - Supplies
https://www.hedgehogleather.co.uk/ - Leather, supplies
https://leather4craft.co.uk/ - Leather, supplies, workshops
https://www.georgebarnsleyandsons.co.uk/ - Toolmaker
https://armitageleather.com/ - Workshops, info

My experience is tainted from an incident at uni involving my flatmate and his friends, nakedly encircling poor Henry… I can only imagine what horrors those eyes saw…

Indeed and what I also love about federation is it is also within your rights to not give people a platform or be forced to listen to them. If people don’t like what they have to say then they will still be able to shout but only into the void and echo chambers.

Both are just classifieds type sites aren’t they?

I’ve just found Create which is a British company and has a few different payment gateways so could be a viable option for me.