What actually goes into a handmade leather piece?

One of the funny things about handmade products is that the finished piece rarely shows how much work happened before it got there.

You see the bag. I see the pattern pieces spread across the cutting table, the leather hides being moved around, this way then that way, looking for the best section. I see the big pile of offcuts on the floor and definitely a coffee somewhere nearby that I've forgotten about.

Before I even cut the leather...

Buying leather isn't like buying a perfectly uniform roll of fabric. Every hide is different, imperfect.

There are variations in colour, texture, grain and little marks from the animal's life (how amazing!).

So before cutting anything, I spend a fair bit of time looking over the hide and working out where each pattern piece should sit.

Some areas are firmer.

Some are softer.

Some have beautiful grain that I want somewhere visible.

And occasionally there's a section that simply isn't right for the piece I'm making.

There's quite a bit of moving patterns around before the knife even comes out.

Then everything is cut by hand.

Once I've worked out the layout, each piece is traced from the hand-drawn pattern, then cut individually.

Depending on what I'm making, there might only be a handful of pieces or there might be quite a collection sitting on the table by the end.

Straps, pockets, gussets, tabs, little reinforcements and all the other bits you don't necessarily notice once the piece is finished.

Now we go into the guts of the leatherwork, the stuff that takes the most time;

Trimming.

Skiving thicker sections.

Punching holes.

Marking where hardware needs to go.

Burnishing edges.

Checking that everything lines up before stitching.

None of it is particularly dramatic. It's just lots of small jobs done carefully.

And then there are all the scraps, or shall I say "toys".

Very little leather seems to stay "just a scrap" for long in our house.

My girls are two and four, and they'll happily raid the offcuts from the workshop and turn them into whatever they need for their imaginative play.

A round piece becomes a biscuit or a doughnut for a tea party.

A few layered scraps become sandwiches.

Long pieces become crowns or bandages.

Tiny circles become coins.

I've watched the same bit of leather be food, money, jewellery and something completely different five minutes later.

I love that about simple materials. They don't necessarily need to look exactly like the thing they're pretending to be. The girls decide what they are.

It's probably one of the reasons I've become so interested in making more open-ended play pieces lately. Sometimes the simplest objects seem to create the biggest games.

My favourite part is stitching!!

All of my leather goods are stitched here in my home workshop using my 1937 vintage Singer sewing machine or my hands.

There's something I really love about that part of the process.

Once the pieces start coming together, you finally get to see the object you've been picturing in your head.

A flat collection of leather pieces suddenly starts looking like a bag.

It's also where you can't rush things too much.

Leather remembers holes. If you stitch through the wrong place, you can't simply pull the thread out and pretend it never happened.

So there's a fair amount of stopping and checking, and lots of muttering to myself.

Then there are all the little finishing jobs

Once something is technically assembled, it still isn't really finished.

Hardware needs checking.

Loose threads are trimmed.

Edges might need another polish.

The leather gets conditioned.

Straps are adjusted.

And I usually spend a ridiculous amount of time looking over the whole thing before I'm happy to

package it. I blame this (good) habit on my husband. He has a meticulous attention to detail which is both a blessing and a curse to me in other areas of life... ikyk.

Handmade will never be the fastest way to make something

And that's okay!

There are much quicker ways to manufacture a bag.

But the reason I love making things this way is that I know exactly how they were put together.

I know the leather.

I know the stitching.

I know which parts took a little extra convincing to sit properly.

And when I package an order, I know that piece has passed through my hands from the very beginning. From flat lay leather to this beautiful piece of art.

That's what handmade means to me.

Not that every single stitch will be absolutely identical or that natural leather won't have variations.

Quite the opposite, really.

It's knowing that an actual person sat at a workbench, chose the materials, cut the pieces, made the thing with the help of a whole family, and cared about how it turned out.

It's definitely a slower way of doing things.

But I think some things are worth making slowly.

Warmly,

Sarina