Reclaimed Leather Pieced Together

[onelooneyzeta]

I work with used footballs.  I am a HS football coach and stumbled my way into making leather wallets out of used footballs for gifts for our graduating seniors.  Fell in love with the craft have started expanding what I do.  

I was recently asked by a fellow coach to make a messenger style bag out of a bunch of old footballs.  So my first obstacle that I am encountering in the planning phase is how to make larger panels out of a bunch of small football panels.  My initial thought is to take each panel of the football and cut it down to a square or rectangle and then attach it to another panel.  Then I would end up with a larger panel that I could cut to my measurements.  

Anybody have any experience doing something like this.  Attaching pieces of leather together to get a larger working surface.  

Any suggestions, tips, help, etc.

 

[Mattsbagger]

No experience but as you say cut into rectangles and stitch together  (baseball stitch) then attach to a thin leather with contact cement. That would give you a large one piece section of leather to work with. That's how I would do it.

[fredk]

Why waste time cutting into rectangles/squares? Disassemble football, if necessary just trim the edges of the pieces if they are worn. Sew together using your favourite method and style and build it up like a jigsaw.

I've only made one possibles bag this way and people have asked me to make more and bigger patch-work bags. Its quite a fashion and they can fetch really silly prices when they have a top fancy name on them. I make leather caps/hats this way too

[rodneywt1180b]

It's a cool idea and would certainly have meaning for the person you're making it for.   I think it might be worth thinking about keeping the shapes of at least some of the panels or the stitching on the football so it's easily recognizable as being made from old footballs. 

Maybe branch out with baseball skins too?

[onelooneyzeta]

4 minutes ago, fredk said:

Why waste time cutting into rectangles/squares? Disassemble football, if necessary just trim the edges of the pieces if they are worn. Sew together using your favourite method and style and build it up like a jigsaw.

I've only made one possibles bag this way and people have asked me to make more and bigger patch-work bags. Its quite a fashion and they can fetch really silly prices when they have a top fancy name on them. I make leather caps/hats this way too

I'm so new at all this.  So with all the panels being an oblong shape they won't quite butt up together.  Should I just overlap them?  I would definitely have to do some trimming.  Where all the panels fit together on the football are very rough.  

Do you have any suggestions on stitching style to use?  I have only used a saddle stitch.  

2 minutes ago, rodneywt1180b said:

It's a cool idea and would certainly have meaning for the person you're making it for.   I think it might be worth thinking about keeping the shapes of at least some of the panels or the stitching on the football so it's easily recognizable as being made from old footballs. 

Maybe branch out with baseball skins too?

I definitely want to branch out into the baseball goods.  After football season this my schedule opens up and I'll be able to devote some more time to the craft.  Have lots of ideas and plans for baseballs and gloves.

[Stetson912]

That's a neat idea. Requires a lot of thinking and posses a lot of what ifs. 

For instance. What if... Ahem... You use the football panels for the side of the bag and just but them up best you can and use other leather to fill in the gaps between them? 

Or, what if... You use some vertically and where they have the gap in between use a panel horizontally? It's hard to explain in words. I hope you understand what I'm getting at haha 

[fredk]

The one I did, and the hats are sewn outside-to-outside using saddle st. Then they are folded out so the seam is to the inside. On a bag you could do them overlapped; one down, one up, next one down _--_.   Just trim them as necessary and fit them on, by over-lapping they don't need to be a perfect interlocking fit

[DJole]

I like the idea of the leather cap made of football pieces-- the pieces would already be lozenge shaped and could be trimmed to size. 

[Stetson912]

Another idea, use the football pieces as an inlay on the body panel. You'd make a regular bag and can cut panels like usual and just inlay the football pieces where you like.

[byggyns]

If it were me, I would do the center of the front, back, and flap on the bag with the ball panels arranged vertically next to each other. then use more panels and trim them to fit the gaps between the whole panels. That way you have the full panels as a focus. Maybe mix and match and use the panels with the logos & lacing as your central focus and the plain panels as the fill ins.

A layout like this, with the red ovals as the full panels. I know the shape of the panels is not quite an oval, but it should fit a little like this.

[Northmount]

I would try laying the pieces out on a table, flat.  Then try to arrange so they overlap and fill the area you need for your panel size.  Trim the overlaps where needed, glue and stitch.  May need to cut some pieces in half to fill voids on the edges.  The pattern doesn't need to be repeatable, could be completely random.  I think stitching them face to face and turning them face out would make the piece quite bulky and it may not lay flat.  That's why I would do overlapping seams.

Try a small panel and see if it works the way you want.  Then let us know the best way you come up with.  looking forward to seeing photos of the results, both as panels, and as a finished project.  Good luck.

Tom

[billybopp]

While used footballs are probably somewhat plentiful for you, they're still a limited supply.  Try tracing the shape of the leather on paper, or better cardboard and cut 'em out.  Use those to experiment with your layout to find something that works and when you've figured it out use the real deal.

Bill

[onelooneyzeta]

These are all great ideas! I like bygyyns idea.

I do think that they'll have to be laid flat.  Face to face would be too bulky. 

over laping and laying them flat, would a saddle stitch be my best bet?

[Northmount]

Saddle stitch or machine stitch.

Tom

[onelooneyzeta]

Any suggestions for helping to flatten these panels back out?  I mostly make small goods and have just worked with curved nature of the leather.  But, for this project it would really help to get these panels flattened out.

[JMixx]

On 11/10/2017 at 9:57 AM, byggyns said:

If it were me, I would do the center of the front, back, and flap on the bag with the ball panels arranged vertically next to each other. then use more panels and trim them to fit the gaps between the whole panels. That way you have the full panels as a focus. Maybe mix and match and use the panels with the logos & lacing as your central focus and the plain panels as the fill ins.

A layout like this, with the red ovals as the full panels. I know the shape of the panels is not quite an oval, but it should fit a little like this.

If you offset those ovals, so the narrow end of one row of ovals tucks into the gap between the narrow ends of the ovals in the row above, there's hardly any space left to cover.  But do you get those regular ovals when you flatten out the football? Slicing up one 3-D image leaves you with one similar to the one below.  I wonder if  pieces shaped like the one below could be offset and "meshed." (If that makes sense...)