A while back I had my first foray into stitching up leather goods, inspired by the wallet in
Walter Mitty. I never worked with leather before and for some reason had figured it would be simple blind stitching but SPOILER ALERT it was not - nonetheless it was heaps of fun! Tried to follow
this great tutorial by High on Glue to the letter but improvised some in terms of materials and leather-making tools, or the lack thereof.
Tools used: leather scraps (from handicraft stores in Chinatown, the scraps are cheaper if you can find large enough pieces), stitching awl, pair of scissors, two needles, waxed cotton thread, a lighted candle and a print-out of the pattern you can find at the tutorial link.
First step is to prepare your *tools of voodoo doom (*needles) - attaching a needle at each end of your piece of waxed thread, as according to this tutorial. I used the lighted candle to get wax to stick the thread together after the last step, you can do this as well if you have unwaxed thread or do not keep recreational bee hives you can get beeswax from.
The next steps were to cut your leather pieces according to the template, so you get two separate pieces of leather to form the back and front of the wallet. You will need to mark out the holes along the sides of the wallet so you can stitch the two pieces together. Basically the only tool I had was a stitching awl because I am too beginner to invest in any more, so I overlaid the paper template on the piece of leather once it was cut to the desired shape, and pierced through the template markings to get evenly spaced holes. (Be sure to pierce through with your awl all the way through - if you fumble with the holes using your needles later you can get ugly uneven stitching, as I got in some places.)
If you follow the template, at this point you would have two pieces of leather with holes along the side, and all that is left is to stitch the two pieces together to form your wallet! Next comes the stitching part, which is different from normal stitching because you are working with two needles.
This tutorial helped a lot, though I improvised without the stitching pony (by trying to have as steady a hand as possible to hold leather pieces in place) getting even stitches is hard at first try but it gets progressively easier I promise!
If all goes well, you can complete with a knot of the thread (you can very lightly burn the knot to prevent fraying or to flatten it a little but be careful not to burn the leather because it leaves a mark)! I skipped conditioning because I used scrap leather so it was not the biggest investment - you can use thicker ~*premium*~ leather for a more advanced attempt. Leatherwork was loads of fun overall and I'd love to get better, sans burning clumsy thumbs - definitely worth a shot!
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