practice hand stitching

[johnny7]

Mike, I don't know much about stitching but I think your piece looks pretty good. Just looks like you pulled the thread a little tighter on some stitches than others. The tooling looks good too. Like the way you did the leaves.

Johnny

[Mike]

Luke,

I have the Art of Hand Sewing. That's how I learned. Stohlman also included hand sewing instructions in his Top 20 book on wallets. In that book, he focuses more on stitching lighter weight items. There he uses a #7 stitching wheel. I have one but it just seems too long a stitch for wallets.

[Srigs]

I used a stitching awl for about 15 minutes and said this is not going to work for me.

What does work for me is a retangle punch with one, three and four prong types. It helps to keep things lined up by using the last hole you punched as the first hole in the next series. Before I start punching, I lightly use an awl to draw the pattern I'm punching. This works for me and is much easier and faster to make good looking stitching lines.

I hope this helps.