First Project (In A Long Time)

[dakotabrewer]

Just getting back into leatherwork after a long hiatus - I learned how to do some basic stuff back in 4H but that was over 20 years ago. I've been meaning to get back into it as a hobby for a while. A buddy of mine needs a seat done for his shovelhead so I told him I'd take a crack at it - I have some tools and it would give me a good excuse to get started. I had an old Tandy starter kit laying around so I figured I would use it for practice before starting on the seat. He is also a homebrewer so he wanted something beer related - so those are hop leafs and hops, which will get worked into the design for the seat.

[Blazin]

Looks good to me. I need to learn to do that edge braiding myself. Thanks for sharing.

[Ckoltz]

The edge braiding is fantastically done! The only critisism I have for ya is that the leaves seem a little...blank. Maybe swipe some lines on with your swivel knife? Or use a veiner? I am not very familiar with hops leaves, so this advice could be completely irrelevant haha. Happy tooling!!

[Ken Cook]

I know what you mean about 20 years. It's been since about 1978 for me.

I've always taken cre of my own repairs, but never realy put it to real use.

Your work loosk good. Is that a tripple loop stitch?

[LNLeather]

That's pretty good considering how long it has been since 4H.

Sure there are things you can do better ( and you will with practice )

But I see Good Lacing and your Backgounding is Really Really Good!

I saw someone's first pieces yesterday and I really liked the way he did

his leaves, and I'll be looking at that picture again to see if I can do that too...

The one I'm talking about is here and is the first piece with the green leaves.

I hope that helps you too!

[dakotabrewer]

Hey thanks for the replies! I will be sure to try to add some more definition to the leaves next time, maybe try a viener or something. One thing I noticed when tooling is that it was hard to get the carving to stand out much - but this leather was really thin. The leather I got for the seat is like 3 times thicker so that should help. The lacing was double loop I think, I might try to learn round lacing for the seat - I've seen some on here and it looks really nice.