Hand Sewing Leather - Part One

When I first started doing leatherwork, I tried to stick to the projects that did not require sewing by hand. Unless you have done a lot of hand sewing on leather, you will want to plan your mode of attack before you start. It is not that sewing leather by hand is that difficult but it is time consuming and at first, it can be a little painful. I have sewn a lot of leather by hand over the years and I do believe that the best hand-sewn project that I have done is the latest one that I finished. In other words, I would rather be done with hand sewing than having to do it in the first place. In some ways, it is a tradeoff, great looks for owies on your fingers. Your attitude toward this feat may be a lot different from mine.

When I first began doing leatherwork I purchased kits for the wallets and purses that I was requested to make. It was because it was actually a lot cheaper for me to do that than it was to purchase the different leathers to make the different parts of the project. The cost was something that kept me from getting a heavy-duty sewing machine as well. The neat thing about the kits is that most of them came with the holes already punched. It was a lot simpler to make things that I could lace together with the lacing supplied with a kit, that is, unless the lacing supplied was plastic.

I am very traditional in many things that I do concerning my leatherwork. Some kits came with plastic lacing and using it on a belt or wallet is not something that I would do. It has the same effect on me as fingernails grating across a chalkboard does. If I am making a project out of leather, I believe that the whole thing should be made from leather, including the lace. That is why I am willing to spend more money than I probably should to buy and make all of my project pieces out of leather.

Now, I will get off my soapbox and get back to the original subject, which is hand-sewing leather. Depending upon the item you are sewing, there are generally more ways to accomplish the task than I will be able to describe in this post. That being said, there might be a best way to sew your project when ready. I am all about making a task easier if it will not reduce the quality of the work that is to be done and if it can be done in a safe manner.

The method of hand sewing a project that I am the most familiar with can be described as saddle stitching. Saddle stitching requires two needles and a lot of thread. When I say a lot of thread, I mean just that. I worked with a saddle maker who thought that it was necessary to stitch the whole cantle on a saddle with only one piece of thread. He would pull out at least thirty feet of thread, hook his needles to either end of the thread, and begin stitching on one side of the cantle. He would walk halfway across his side of the shop to get the threads on each needle even. This sewing job took a lot of thread and time because there are many stitches across a cantle and there is more than one thickness of heavy leather on this part of a saddle.

I realize that most of you will not be sewing saddles and you are probably wandering why I am describing this method of sewing leather. I think that you will find that this method is the one that will work the best for you for almost any hand sewing that needs to done on a project made with leather.

You know, as I get close to half the way to the normal length of this post, I am realizing that it will take two or three posts to give you all the information about saddle or hand stitching a leather project. I have loads of photos to help with the directions and I believe that most of them are in focus as well. It is my desire with this series of posts to give you a little bit of information overload so that you will be totally prepared when you are ready to stitch your way to glory and sore fingers.

The photo below shows just a few of the tools that are helpful, if not necessary to hand-sew a leather project. The first two are saddle-stitching needles. I included two different sizes just for the preliminary photos. Saddle stitching is best done by using two needles of the same size. Saddle-stitching needles do not have sharp points like those that you would find on needles used for sewing fabric. A sharp point on a needle can easily be snagged when it is being pushed through multiple thicknesses of leather. Saddle-stitching needles do come in more than one size and the smaller the better and hopefully easier.

Saddle stitching needles and tools

The second item that you will want to have for hand sewing or saddle stitching a project, unless everything is pre-punched, is a stitching awl. The awl is used to poke holes in the leather so that you can get your needles from one side of the project to the other. Please keep in mind that a leather-stitching awl is not round like a scratch awl and that is for a good reason. I will explain the reason when I go into more detail about the use of the awl.

Included in the previous photo there are five other items used for marking stitch length on your project. The two on the left are overstitchers and the three on the left are stitch length markers. Overstitchers were evidently made to mark the stitch length and then to be run over the top of the newly formed stitches to make them look better. I tried only a couple of times to go back over the top of my stitches and it was not a pretty thing. I had additional impressions in the leather where my overstitcher had added new marks to the alongside the previous holes when it ran away on me. In other words, I lost control of it because I did not know what I was doing.

The last three items in the right hand portion of the photo are stitch length markers or rollers. I think that the description depends upon the person to whom you are talking with at the time. I have a tendency to call them whatever comes to mind if asked. The stitch length is market out on your project by pressing down with enough pressure to make the points go into the leather. Overstitchers and markers can be found with various numbers of stitches per inch. I prefer the smaller numbers to the larger ones because it means that I will be finished sooner and my fingers will heal up that much quicker. (The lower the number, the fewer stitches per inch.)

There are two things about sewing leather by hand that I would be remiss if I did not tell you about. First, you will definitely develop some tender, sore, and maybe some downright painful places on and in your fingers and hands during and after the time, you complete sewing a project by hand. Not only are you doubling up on the number of times that you will need to pull a needle through the leather, you will find that leather has more resistance to your needles than fabric might have. Second, you will need to pull the threads to a snug fit after each stitch and that will definitely cause your fingers to bark at you from the pain. Who knows, you might become the owner of multiple little blisters at the points on your fingers where you grip the thread and pull it through the leather.

One more thing about the photo above, each one of the stitch length tools marks out the exact same stitches per inch. Before I became the proud owner of the four tools on the right hand side of the photo, I owned only the overstitcher next to the stitching awl. I inherited the other tools form a dearly departed friend. Who knows, maybe I can hold one in each hand, one between my toes on each foot, and one in my mouth and mark the stitches on a project. I do suppose that it might depend on the mood I am in as well because color choice may play an important role as well.

If you have any questions or comment be sure to let me know and I will do my best to get them answered.

Have fun!