Sewing with leather: first attempt.

After two days of thinking, twenty minutes of drafting, one hour and one broken needle, I produced this bag.

I always knew I needed more sparkles in my life - hey, who doesn't need sparkles? So when I joined a blogger meet-up in London two weeks ago and saw these two sparkly pieces of leather in a shop, I bought them immediately.

If you are an animal rights activist, you can stop reading here! If, like me, you are interested to discover working with this material, read on!

This was the very first time for me to sew with leather and it was scary. But we all have to start somewhere!

Initially, the inspiration came from browsing online but then I started thinking about everything I like and need in a bag. Besides being pretty, I like big bags where I can carry many things: laptop, camera, Kindle, notebook, bottle of water or thermos with coffee, a pair of dancing shoes and many other little things.

After that, I looked at my old bag and evaluated its pros and cons, and I came up with a pattern. Basically, there are two rectangles, one of which has rounded edges. Since this was my first time sewing with leather, I realized that it would be more difficult to work the corners.

When I finished drafting my two rectangles, I also added 0.5cm of seam allowance as well as a strap.

From the leftover fabric, I made a little inside pocket for more things :)
Once the pieces were cut, I sewed them together as if they were fabric, right sides together.

Different sources on the Internet suggested two methods of handling the seams: either by topstitching or, if you don't want the stitches to show on the outside, by gluing them. In my case, the 0.5cm seam allowances don't bother me at all, so I left them as they were.

When sewing straps, I folded each one twice lengthwise, creating three layers of leather (the final strap is 2cm in width). Since I made the bag, I've being carrying tons of heavy things including my laptop with charger, groceries and fabric (did I say fabric?) and the seams have not split.

Fancy stitching for the straps!
I am a bit concerned about the aesthetic look of the straps where they are attached to the bag. You can see from the photos that, at first, I stitched all the way along the strap and then, to attach each strap to the bag, I stitched rectangles . Do you know any other method to stitching straps to the bag!

Having made this bag, I'd like to share some points to consider when sewing with leather.

• Do not use regular pins because they leave holes, but quilting pins.
• You can use regular polyester thread.
• Use a special leather needle. I wanted to disregard this advice myself, but ended up with a broken needle after 20 seconds.
• Sew with tracing paper on top of the leather to avoid the pieces from shifting. I made a few stitches without paper and had to rip the seam and re-stitch it again.
• If you leather is very thin, you can iron it! I adjusted the heat of my iron to 'Wool' (low heat) and had absolutely no problem ironing my leather.

Besides that, have anyone of you worked with leather before? Are there more tricks and tips you can share to help me improve for the next project?