Good morning! I live in the 4 Corners area, with a quilt store in Cortez, CO and another in Farmington, NM. I learned leather working in grade school and have done some, off and on, since then. I spent most of my life as a farrier and rancher, so being familiar with leather was a requirement, but I didn't regularly take time to do anything fancy with it. Usually just the basics to get by. I was just beginning to build my collection of stamps and other tools to do more when the ranch we were leasing, and fixing to buy, got sold out from under us. At the same time, my wife's boss, who owned the local quilt store, announced she was retiring and would close the quilt store unless we purchased it from her. The timing seemed perfect, so we purchased it instead of a ranch. Shortly after, I got introduced to the book "Quilted Leather" by Cathy Wiggins, and found my new passion. I now am working on getting handier with 'tooling' leather with a sewing machine by quilting it. Looking forward to learning more about leather work from all here, and sharing ideas about how to use thread to replace stamps and paints and dyes.
I ought to add that I became a sewing machine technician when we purchased the store, so I have learned the ins and outs of how to repair and maintain machines. Of course, we are dealers of domestic machines, but they'll handle lighter weight leather with no problem (2mm thick easily), but mechanically there aren't any real significant differences.
