Sewing with Leather, Costume Con 33 |

Our leather panel at CC covered so many topics! I’m going to try to touch on every one of them in the post as well as provide reference images and tutorial links. Here we go!

Types of Leather:

garment weight : can be any animal, usually sheep, or deer. Pig, cow, elk, ostrich are also available. Each animals leather will have a different thickness and finish. Deer and sheep are soft and smooth, pig has coarser hair with visible follicles, ostrich has large bumps where feathers were. There are even more exotic leathers like gator and manta ray! Get to know your leather supplier, they will know all the good stuff.
Deer Skin

Lamb Skin

Pig Skin

Ostrich Skin

Manta Ray Leather

Alligator Leather
tooling/craft : This is what usually becomes belts, straps, holsters, armor, masks, etc. It comes undyed in a variety fo thicknesses. The leather is veg tanned, making it dense and hard so cutting it requires you use an exacto knife. When wet, you can tool it to add relief details or stretch it over a form. When it dries it will re-stiffen and keep whatever shape it was given. Check this tooling tutorial for an example.
rawhide : is the same stuff you see dog chewing bones made out of. Cow Leather is de-haired and then soaked in lime and lastly stretched out to dry. The final product is very thin, light in color, and very hard. When wet you can mold it over forms or even make lace for sewing that will re-harden when dried.
hair-on : Pretty self explanitory, this leather looks like it came straight off the animal and still has it’s hair. Rabbit is used primarily for trim and lining, while sheep and cow can be used for larger decorative pieces.

Cutting patterns:

Because your ‘fabric’ is coming from a living organism, no two will be alike. Different animals have different sizes even if they’re the same species. The hides will have slight color variations and may even be thicker/thinner. Imperfections may include bullet holes, scars from cuts while the animal was alive, brands, small tears, etc. The best option before purchasing your leather is to see it in person. If that’s not possible most online retailers make notes on specific hides including their flaws.

Garment leather will cut with a strong set of shears. Your orange Friskas might do the job, but you’d do much better with some Gingher knife edge. I find it best to muslin your project first, there is little room for error when working with leather. the muslin will double as your pattern guides and can be used to arrange the pieces on your hide to work around thinned sections and other flaws. Check this post for some example pictures. It is difficult to pin to leather and those holes wont heal. Paper weights used while tracing your pattern can work but you can go farther and use quilters spray adhesive (temporary and starch based) to tack your pattern down while cutting/tracing.

Tacking twill backing to hide

Machine Sewing:

Consumer machines are all very different. The most important thing to do when machine sewing leather is to try it out with your scraps first. You should star by getting a hold of leather machine needles. The main difference is that the point on these needles is designed to cut as it passes through, whereas regular needs are meant to push woven fibers out of the way.

Since you’ve cut out your leather already, it’s time to put those scraps to work. you should set up your machine to do exactly what you’ll do for your actual garment, making sure you’re sewing through the same number of layers, backing fabrics if you’re using those, stitch length, and even the machines speed (I’ve found some machines tend to drop stitches on thick material when being run very slowly) Use this time with your scraps to find the best tension, speed, length, width, etc for your piece. Some decorative stitches will look different on leather than they do on fabric.

As I said earlier, you can’t pin leather but you have a couple of options. One is to glue your seam allowances together using a fast setting glue like E6000. You can also use double sided stick tape to do basically the same thing, but be sure to keep it in the allowance only! If you sew over it, not only will it be a pain to pick out afterward, but it will gunk up your needle. Small binder clips can also come in handy as a very easy solution! Your last option is to not to do any of the above and sew very slowly. This is pretty easy on straight seams, but things with opposite curves can get a little tricky. Practice makes perfect!

When stitching you have to remember that every stitch you make leaves a hole, this is where your margin of error becomes very slim. if you end up ripping out seams to move them out, you will see where the old one was. This is why it is so important to muslin your garment beforehand. Another thing to keep in mind if you are not backing your garment with a fabric is that a seam with a short stitch length will behave an awful lot like a perforated line. the minimum stitch length you want to use is 3mm, you can cheat it smaller if you’re backing but I wouldn’t get too far past 2.5. If you end up going over a particular area multiple times, you may end up cutting your leather at the seam.

You’ve got your seam! It’s very exciting. You may notice when you try on your newly made whatever that the garment is lumpy or puffy around the seams, that’s because leather has a lot of body and those allowances are just sticking straight out doing whatever they want on the inside. The best thing to do is finish your seams. Heres a few examples

Double top stitch : leaves a stitched line to either side of your seam. Does not reinforce the original seam at all and will put stress on the stitches themselves. Looks great and lies very flat but i wouldn’t recommend for something that is being pulled very tight.
Flat Felled : one allowance is cropped very close while the other is folded over and top stitched down. Bulkier than the double top stitch, but this also means that your two pieces are stitched in two seams. It is very secure and the seam will act as if it is very lightly boned.
Lapped Seam : Instead of putting the right sides together, you can always layer the pieces wrong to right side and sew them down. The result will leave an unfinished leather edge showing on the outside of your garment and can most definitely be a stylistic choice.
Arnold Seam : as described by Garb4Guys, this seam involves adding a third piece of leather sandwiched between your original two. The final effect would be like a small leather pipe in the seam. This also prevents the stitches from wearing out from friction.

Hand Sewing

This is totally an option! The nice thing about hand sewing is that you have an incredible amount of control of your stitches, length, type, etc. I’ll break this out by leather type

Garment: The biggest problem sewing leather by hand is driving a needle through the material. Luckily for you there is a product that is designed to slice through leather with ultimate ease. Be VERY careful when handling a glover’s needle. The point is sharp and the tip is actually 3 small blades meant to cut the leather as it passes. I’d recommend not using regular thread. Upholstery, heavy weight, or waxed thread types would be great for this type of hand sewing.
Craft/Tooling: Sewing craft leather is a completely different ball game. It is probably IMPOSSIBLE to hand drive a needle through veg tan. DO NOT ATTEMPT IT. The best thing to do is to pre-punch holes in your leather using a diamond punch. You can get these punches in any number of holes, I personally like the 4 hole. After you’ve set your holes through both layers, you’ll use two saddle needles and heavy waxed thread to do a saddle stitch. Explaining how to with text is out of the scope of this post, but here is a great video.

Eyelets, Grommets, Lacing

There’s another way to put two pieces of leather together and that’s lacing! With lacing, you’ll have a row of holes on either piece of leather and use a cord or lace to lace them up, similar to shoes. The first step is to punch the hole.

hammer punch : the hammer punch is self explanitory, you’ll have a hollow die that you hit with a mallet or hammer that will punch a hole in the leather for you, good for craft/tooling leather, would be trickier for garment weight.
rotary punch : this punch relies on your hand strength to punch the holes for you. There are 6 different size dies that you can rotate around to easily select the proper size. I’ve found that if you don’t get a quality punch, you’re likely to break the dies. This can be used on the thinner craft/tooling leather and garment weight. If you’re backing your leather in fabric, I would not recommend either this or the hammer punch.
metal punch : by far my preferred method of punching holes. This particular punch comes with 7 different dies and instead of cutting with a hollow die, it pushes the hole with a solid die. The resulting hole is a not as ‘clean’ as a hollow punch, but the ease of use makes up for it. I’ve used this on 9/10 oz tooling leather and also garment weight deer with zero problems. This die will also cut through babric backed leather. The adjustable depth ensures that all your holes are an even depth from your edge. Also you can use this to punch holes in sheets of metal if that’s your thing.

Now that you’ve got your holes all set up, there are options on how you’d like to finish them! Do you like how many options I’ve listed for everything? I love lists. Each method has it’s own pros and cons.

unfinished: I would only recommend this for tooling/craft leather. Because garment leather is so soft and stretchy, putting stress on a hole would cause strain on the leather and would lead to stretched out holes or tearing.
eyelet : eyelets are easy to set and will give a nice finished look to your leather piece. A hammer setter is my preferred way as it will not rely on your grip to roll the metal. I would avoid the Dritz brand eyelets as the ends are perforated such that the eyelet will splay out into a star. I’ve found that this leave you with lots of sharp little edges what will catch on your cording and undergarments. The Tandy ones have no such perforation and will roll nicely. I would recommend using eyelets on craft/tooling leather 3 to 4oz and up. Any thinner and it will become harder to find that right force to roll the eyelet down without collapsing the center column. Practice setting eyelets on your scraps! Here’s a handy video.
grommet : These are super strong and look very nice on both sides. It’s basically an eyelet with a washer for thre back side. You can use this for any weight leather but it works particularly well on soft garment weight. Here’s a video on how to set a grommet.
button hole stitch: something easy and decorative to do with a glovers needle is a button hole stitch. Check out this diagram on how to do it.

Finishing

Now for garment leather, after you sew it, you’re pretty much done! For veg tan, you’ll actually want to finish your leather BEFORE you stitch it. I know that sounds a little contrary.

dye: my favorite dye is Eco-Flo water based. It wipes on easily with a rag and drys quickly. Once it’s applied it is PERMANENT. Don’t forget to wear gloves, our hands are essentially covered in leather and you can expect it to be a few days to wash out. I don’t speak from experience. The staining power is strong with this one, do this outside and drop cloth a much bigger area than you need.
sealing: This is a helpful extra step to give your leather a nice sheen and extend it’s longevity. I have used Eco Flo’s Satin sheen with great result. It can also be wiped on using a rag. One to two coats of this will give your piece a uniform finish and also make it waterproof (on the exterior side). Do not attempt to seal the suede side. That side is essentially a sponge and you will use so much product without any great benefit.

Retailers

Where do you buy this stuff? If it wasn’t immediately obvious, I do most of my shopping at Tandy Leather. There is one near me and they have enough variety and materials that I can make it a one stop shopping excursion. That being said, get familiar with your local fabric stores, ask if they carry leather. I lucked out and purchased a FULL COW HIDE of garment leather at a fabric store on super sale that I am still making my way through TO THIS DAY.

If you are near a Tandy or other like leather supplier, ask if they do courses. Many times, you can do a weekend workshop when you have access to the instructor and lots of tools and get to leave with a finished product. This can be a great way to get your feet wet and start working with these tools and materials.

Conclusion

You made it to the end, pat yourself on the back. This was a lot of information. PLease reach out if I can answer anything else. I plan to do another long post like this eventually on the basics of tooling leather. Fingers crossed it doesn’t take me 4 years to get it done. I can be reached at milo@milomakesmesses.com, the comments form below, and on facebook.com/milomakesmesses.