Fosgate

No worries!

Whooa! lets not get ahead of ourselves. She's not married, she's going to be a senior in high school in the fall and her boyfriend is also, he's just taking his Army basic training for the national guard this summer. Decent kid but he doesn't have dads approval or blessing yet.

I bought 2 bags of scrap that was shipped with the kit. Lots of goofed wallet strips where the stitching was not quite right on them etc. Great practice pieces though. Figured I would have her practice from the 5 templates I have for wallets and checkbooks until I feel she can make a nice piece on one of the kits we have. Then once she moves onto the kits We will take measurements of some of what comes in them and let her try duplicating the cuts and creating her own. Also at this time have her practice creating and transferring her own pieces on scrap and once confident transfer t her newly created pieces. From there I planned on letting her tackle another project of her choice, guitar strap, handbag, shoe etc.

My brief history in leathercraft entails a year in Jr. high back in the mid 80's. Worked a couple small projects in shop class and I had an early draw to leather craft. I made my father a wallet that lasted him 15years and my mother still has the checkbook I made her. Anyway, I think part of the reason I got out of it was partially cost but also all I ever knew was the Tandy shop nearby and the patterns seemed repetitive and I sucked at freehand. So the kit went into storage but I never tossed it through all my moves. Going through my memorabilia and stumbled across my kit with my daughter showed interest. That was about a year ago. About a month ago I went to a local gun show and a guy was selling handmade wallets. Nothing special, no tooling, the stain had pretty bad runs and it stains all my cards orange. Granted it will last and I have grown tire of breaking money clips and wallets not lasting more than a year maybe. I'm thinking to myself this guy claims he has 60+ hours into it and I thought for the $45 price tag I could do way better for the same money. Getting back into leathercraft reached it's point a couple weeks ago as we were trying to figure out what my daughter is going to do with herself, other than work, while her boyfriend goes off the Basic Training for the Army. She's a talented artist and has a few paintings on display in a nearby museum and she tries everything art including pottery and welding. The wallet episode turned the light bulb on as I thought, maybe she can find a niche in leathercraft. If not it is another art she can learn that she may be able to apply to other forms of her art. I instantly went online and bought the Tandy Deluxe kit as it was on sale and added it with my own stuff. I had her watch all the videos on the Tandy site and also on Youtube that might be of interest to her. She is exited about being able to make guitar straps, purses, bags, wallets etc. Today I made the bargain that when she finishes the rest of the videos to decide on direction I would give her $200 more toward tools for the direction she wants to take it. Would anyone have any good recommendations to find info and instructions on building items from scratch such as bags, shoes, etc?