Diy Sewing Palm

[impulse]

I am continuing to add to my tools on a budget, so I made up a sewing palm. The palm body is 1.5mm semi stiff scrap leather, but I had to put on my thinking cap re the thimble - an offcut of 7mm rawhide looked promising. I used a 3/4'' hole punch to penetrate half it's thickness, then cut into this to form a flange for sewing onto the palm. After making the stitch holes, I then wet the rawhide to harden it. In addition I sandwiched a 3/4" metal washer (with a very small center hole) between the thimble and the palm.

The stitching is a bit crap but the thimble works extremely well. I now wonder how I managed without it!

[TexasLady]

6/5/11

Hi impulse!

I looked at your profile to see if you've been around here 'in recent history' and was happy to see that you were here only 'yesterday. I did a word search using 'palm pusher' and got 'nothing'. So, then I tried just 'palm' and found your 'sewing palm'. I love what you made. I've made two of my own, and you would laugh to see how similar our stitching looks. Your model is different from mine. Mine was modeled after the Tandy Leather version that I'd purchased, but without a buckle in the back. I really like the 'overlap' that you put in the back, and the two holes that hold a leather 'tie'. That's a nice cheap alternative to a buckle, yet it holds out the possibility of being adjustable in the future, if need be.

You might wonder why, since I'd already purchased the Tandy Leather version that I would make my own, too. I did this toward the end of 2009, when I was working a customer service job, and sewing a pair of moccassins during the 'slow times'. I hated to bring to work my expensive tools. They seemed too much of an investment to being leaving unattended at my desk when I would go on 'break'. Three hundred people worked at that call center. It's not like I'd know where to look if anything 'walked off'. So, I made my own palm pusher. I used my tin snips to cut out a round of textured heavy aluminum (angle iron type from Home Depot) and positioned this round of metal in the hole I cut. Behind that I glued small scraps of leather. Both palm pushers work great, though like yourself, I marvel at the coarseness of my stitching on both.

I'm in college classes and haven't been here or doing any leatherwork this past year. But lately, I got the idea of making some things out of all that leather that's waiting for me in the living room. Also, I have a friend, an ex-classmate, whose husband and son are out of work. I've offered to teach them some leatherwork, and I thought that having them make their own palm pusher [sewing palm?] would be more advantageous than teaching them to make a 'leather coaster', 'key fob', or 'business card holder'. I'm making a third palm pusher today. I've experimented with making the metal part like this: I cased the small piece of leather which I'll later trim to a round shape. I centered it over a plastic (screw on) bottle cap. And then I used a C-clamp, screwing it down onto the leather, until the round 'foot' of the C-clamp had pushed the leather down against the inside of the bottle cap. It dried and looked really good. Like you, I used a large punch to punch out the hole, but I went ahead and punched it all the way through. It looked great, but the Tandy Leather version had its hole over toward one side, at an angle. I probably should have left well enough alone, but I didn't. Right now, I've re-cased it and inserted a little piece of plastic off of a spray can, and screwed it down with the C-clamp, in order to make it have that 'angle' like the Tandy version. I hunted for a small metal washer, but I didn't have one that was small enough. Seeing that yours doesn't have an angle to it, I may just go back to the flat configuration that I'd made originally.

That was so much fun, wasn't it? I'm surprised that this site isn't filled with these. Oh, and my last exploit was to use some Sculpey to make a mold of the round thimble part of my Tandy version. I'll dry it and bake it. Then, maybe I'll push more soft Sculpey into the mold, remove it, dry it, bake it, and use it to wet mold the leather over. This is a great project for using up small, stringy scraps. And, I've got a lot of those. I'm so glad that I found your sewing palm this evening. Bye. - Texas Lady

Edited June 6, 2011 by TexasLady