Been Away For Too Long, New Work !

[corter]

Hey guys and gals! I got my start learning from the pages of this forum, and regretfully I've not had the time to post much in the past few years. I find myself with a few minutes to post up some of my new work, so here we go!

Short back story- started leatherwork in college in 2007, started my business (Corter Leather) in 2008, graduated college in 2009 and never looked back. Been enjoying the crazy life of a small business owner/leather smith since.

Here's some full shell cordovan work:

Some fabric lined wallets:

And Bags

and here's my new stuff. I've been redesigning in preparation for relaunching my website in March with a new line of goods. All custom hardware with my logo, heat brands and mostly Horween Chromexcel leather.

Last, a rather interesting commission I got this summer

[Jazznow]

Wow. Beautiful clean designs. Like them very much

[Andrew Chee]

Nice stuff. For your fabric lined wallets, how do you deal with the edges that are between two pieces of leather? I find that if I keep them raw, they will tend to fray a little from use. Do you fold the fabric first?

Andrew

[Greene]

looks like the years have given some great experience the wallets look great. Probably a dumb question, but are you still hand-stitching many pieces?

[corter]

Thanks! Andrew- yes, fold the fabric at the edges and make the fabric piece slightly smaller than the leather shell on the sides and bottom, then glue it down good. That way your leather seams will hang over the fabric, so the fabric will never see daylight on the sides and bottom.

Greene- everything there is hand sewn (besides the fabric tote bag), I don't machine sew. I usually make between 50-100 pieces a week not including belts and bracelets, so needless to say I've gotten pretty quick saddle stitching.

Edited March 1, 2013 by corter

[jayjay]

wallets look great I really like your design. If you don't mind what ounce leather are you using?

[corter]

Depends. Between 2 and 5 for wallets/pockets, usually around 6 or 7 for bags.

[WScott]

This is really great stuff!!

Beautiful wallets, impressed you are hand stitching most things

You gotta tell us the Mitt Romney story that goes with the last pic

[corter]

Thanks!

That's a pretty good story. I got an email about a rush job over the summer, I think it was 25 of each color of those notebook covers in 3 days. I said yea, I can get that done for you with a 25% rush fee, BUT I can waive the fee if you pay cash when you pick them up

So the person says a credit card is cool, the job gets finalized, and then they asked if they could give me a call. I said yea sure, thinking I was about to walk right into one of those micro-managing-customer situations because there was literally nothing else to talk about, it was a pretty simple job.

I pick up and the girl on the phone goes "Yea, I just wanted to let you know that I'm Mitt Romney's personal aid. We need these covers branded with his signature, because he's giving them out as gifts on his Olympic tour of Europe in July." My jaw about dropped to the floor! I'm in Boston, he lives here, and his aid is only a couple years older than me & saw my stuff somewhere online. She wanted to give gifts that were made in the USA and would be useful instead of engraved paperweights they usually give.

So basically he put some Field Notes notebooks in my notebook sleeves and gave them to foreign presidents and leaders. I know the President of Poland and Israeli Prime Minister got one, some Olympic committee folks, but at the time the details of his trip were classified and they couldn't tell me. Then when he got back he went into full time campaign mode, so I never found out exactly who got them. I never got to meet him, but his personal aid did come over a few times and she was pretty cool. My best friend's fiancé worked the Scott Brown campaign so we knew some of the same people. And she had her secret service identifier pin on once, which was super awesome to see.

[Greene]

That'd a great story. Very impressed with the stitching also.