Sewing with Leather

I have had a very busy week but am back with a new post on sewing with leather. As you may remember I sewed a leather purse for my mum as a Christmas present last year.

I learned a couple of things during this project, which I would like to share with you. But keep in mind that I’m by no means an expert in leather construction. These are just some of the things I've learned along the way. At the bottom of the post you will find a couple of links, which may be useful if you are planning to sew with leather. So, let's get started.

DECIDING ON A PROJECT

As a first project with leather it’s good to choose something easy. As Rūta has pointed out in a comment on my blog, it is advisable to choose designs with few sharp corners, as they are difficult to achieve with leather. Sharp edges that require a lot of pressing and bulky seams with too many layers of fabric are also difficult to sew. I used the Diana shoulder bag pattern from BurdaStyle, which is quite simple. Also check out Rūta’s blog for some excellent leather sewing inspiration, for example here, here or here.

LEATHER DOES NOT FRAY

When deciding on a project keep in mind that leather does not fray. This makes the construction process somewhat easier and reduces the amount of pressing and bulk of layers. For the handle of my purse, I simply stitched two pieces of leather together at the edges on the wrong side and then trimmed the edges as neatly as possible. I did not, as would be ordinary with regular fabric, sew the handle with right sides together and turn.
The inside leather pouches of my bag are also not turned over at the edges but simply topstitched at the edges as you can see below. Keep this in mind when you design your project and cut your pieces for sewing. It may simplify things.

MARKING YOUR FABRIC

Tailor’s chalk does not work well on leather. Instead there are a variety of pens you can use to mark leather on the wrong side of the fabric. I used silver and gold markers. Permanent markers would probably work well too, if the material is not too dark.

PINNING

Leather cannot be pinned because pins would leave permanent holes in the fabric. There are different ways of securing your fabric pieces before sewing. I simply used regular tape to secure two pieces of fabric together on the wrong side of the material. Many leather sewing resources suggest using binder clips. I didn’t have any binder clips but I also didn’t have a lot of difficult matching to do.

In order to secure the zipper before sewing it into the bag I used a dissolvable glue marker. It worked like a charm and secured the zipper well.

Apparently this Aqua Glue Marker can be used instead of pinning or basting on all types of fabric because it can be washed out. I haven’t tried it yet, and will probably stick to classic methods but for those of you who find basting intolerably boring and time-consuming this marker might make things easier.

MACHINE SEWING

Most of the seams in the leather purse I made were machine sewn. A regular machine can handle leather well, as long as it is not too thick and you don’t attempt to sew through several layers of fabric. Two layers of fabric was the maximum my machine could handle.

Leather Needles
Leather needles are stronger than ordinary needles and are a good investment if you plan to sew with  leather.

Thread
Don’t use cotton thread, but a polyester blend or pure polyester thread. It is not necessary to buy stronger thread than the one you would use in ordinary sewing projects. I only used thicker topstitching thread in places where the stitches would be visible on the outside, simply because topstitching thread looks neater.

Stitch Length
Use a long stitch length on your machine. I used a stitch length of about 4 to 4.5. If you use a small stitch length more holes are punched into the leather and this may cause your leather to rip.

Leather Sewing Presser Foot
While I did not use a special leather sewing presser foot I will consider buying one for future projects. A leather foot ensures that the fabric slides easily through the machine. A lot of damage can be done to leather without a leather presser foot, because the machine can leave scrape marks! Lesson learned!

HAND SEWING

A lot of seams in my purse project had to be done by hand, because the machine could not handle more than two layers of fabric. Now let me tell you, if you have tried sewing leather by hand, you know why your machine is having trouble sewing more than two layers and you will stop cursing it immediately.

I bent three hand stitching needles in the process and would never attempt to sew leather again without proper leather needles. A thimble is a must if you don’t want needles stuck in your finger. Occasionally I even had to get out the pliers to pull the needle through. Sewing leather by hand is a true workout.

In order to make the stitches durable as well as neat from both sides of the stitching I used regular straight stitches one way and then went back over the same stitches the other way, inserting the needle in the same holes but from the opposite direction.

PRESSING

Many leather sewing resources online consider pressing leather with an iron a taboo, because heat and steam apparently damage leather permanently. Having only limited supplies and little leather sewing knowledge at hand, I ignored this taboo and ironed out my seam allowances all the same. I made sure to use a low heat setting and no steam. I ironed the fabric from the wrong side and used a piece of cloth for protection. The leather didn’t seem to be visibly damaged but the results were still rather poor.

Alternatively, I placed difficult to press pieces of leather under a stack of books overnight. For the flap of my purse I cut a piece of cardboard in the shape of the pattern piece minus seam allowance and put it into the flap and left the whole thing under a stack of books overnight.

Leather sewing experts recommend finger pressing or hammering leather with a wooden mallet and then cement gluing the seam allowance or hem to the garment to make sure it stays flat. In the video link listed below you can see how this is done.

 LEATHER SEWING RESOURCES

How to Sew Leather on a Standard Sewing Machine
Video: Make a Classic Leather Seam
10 Tips to Sew Leather by Hand

I hope some of you will find this information useful and I’d love to see some leather sewing projects from all of you talented seamstresses (and seamsters ?) out there in the future…