Learning To Make Wallets

[MonicaJacobson]

I've been practicing making wallets the last month or so. I bought an 8spi vergez iron in November, and am enjoying getting to use it. Obviously, I used my normal 6 spi on some, but I'm definitely moving towards 8spi for wallets. Just need smaller thread and needles.

First to last, minus the dragon wallet I've already posted.

LOL, the first one was beyond terrible:

These are a little better, I hope.

[plowboy73]

Ok i am blown away by the coolness of your tooled ones. Looks great to me!

[capsterdog]

They all look wonderful. I am still testing my wallet theories, I hope they look as good.

[texback]

That's some pretty nice wallets you have there/

[MonicaJacobson]

Thanks guys!

There have been a few discussions on how to get consistent stitching. I tried three out of four ways this month. 1. use a chisel to punch holes in all the pieces, then glue together. Hard to get stitching to line up. The whole wallet goes wonky if anything is at all misaligned.

2. use a chisel to go all the way through all layers at once. On the tooled wallets, I ended up getting crooked stitching lines even when I thought I was keeping the chisel completely parallel.

3. the x way - glue everything together, punch half-way on each side, and connect with an awl. I was skeptical, but this way seems to be the most consistent. I'm completely converted.

[25b]

3. the x way - glue everything together, punch half-way on each side, and connect with an awl. I was skeptical, but this way seems to be the most consistent. I'm completely converted.

Yep. Glad to hear that worked for you. That's the way I've been doing it for a long time and it works great.

Edited February 19, 2015 by 25b

[kwelna]

Your wallets look great, switch from a chisel to a pricking iron and then complete the hole with an awl. I think you again will see a bit of improvement in the looks\alignment of the stitching.

[MonicaJacobson]

25B -ha, I thought you'd feel justified. Now you just need to convert Joe.

kwelna, - the 6spi is the chisel and the 8spi is the pricking iron. You're right, there's definitely a difference, and it's not just the size. Guess I need to save up for the whole collection.

[BigMatt]

Have you tried Tiger Thread? I really like it on smaller items. It is soooooo consistent.

Also, the diamond chisels from Tandy aren't slanted enough from me. All of my stitches seem to run together and bunch up on themselves. I like the ones from leathercrafttools.com

Edited February 19, 2015 by BigMatt

[MonicaJacobson]

Oh yes, I love it. That's what I used on all of these. The problem is, even the .6mm isn't thin enough on a single layer. On the lizard skin one, you can see it looks too big along the top where I sewed the lizard skin to the pigskin. Joe recommended Royalwood linens, but I need to chase them down by phone as they haven't answered my e-mail. Of course, the other alternative is Au Chinois, but it's $48.00 + shipping for only 820 feet! Crazy. I did find out you can get waxed Tiger thread in .4mm from Abbey England (at $64.00 + shipping) for 1000 meters. But only in "mid brown" and black. I was hoping to find cream.