Leatherworking 1

—by Hannah

Recently I had the pleasure of participating in Jennifer Holcomb’s Leatherworking 1 class over at Portland Sewing. I thoroughly enjoyed this class. We learned an array of leatherworking basics such as skiving, beveling, burnishing, dying, how leather becomes leather, tooling, a few hand stitches and a number of machine techniques. She packs in a lot for six weeks and definitely has knowledge to fill every minute. She is very patient and will answer any question you have. I recommend going with a list!  

During class you complete a leather clutch or zipper pouch and a belt. I thought I’d share my belt process with you.

First, we used water to wrap the buckle with leather.

After the leather dried, we stitched as close the buckle as possible using a saddle stitch.

After skiving the belt loop and belt, we sewed the belt together using a saddle stitch.

Lastly, we dyed and burnished all of the edges. You can see this in the first photo.

And here’s my finished clutch! We carry these frames at Bolt if need be!