Passport cover - stitching practice

[DarrelT]

I put this together in about 2 hours yesterday. My family is traveling to Europe in September and I want to make four of these. So I'm practicing on scrap for now. This leather is pretty soft chrome tan. Not fun to cut accurately. For the edges I just stained black and use some gum trag. My real interest here was stitching practice. I'm working on consistency and trying to develop muscle memory for saddle stitching patterns. I'm pretty happy with my progress so far. I also want to make a biker wallet for myself. I also want to make a case for my old cribbage board and card deck.

[Retswerb]

Looks great! Those will definitely serve you well.

[bikermutt07]

Stitches are looking good. It is hard to tell, but you may have a few of them snugged down a bit tighter than others. If so, practice getting consistent tension thru out the whole piece. Every leather is a little different. 

Great job. And, you have inspired my next project. My boss's son is going out of the country in March. I think I'll make him one for the trip.

[DarrelT]

15 hours ago, bikermutt07 said:

Stitches are looking good. It is hard to tell, but you may have a few of them snugged down a bit tighter than others. If so, practice getting consistent tension thru out the whole piece. Every leather is a little different. 

There are some inconsistencies, but with such soft leather it was easy to pull the stitches too tightly. That was part of my reason for practicing on this. To see how even of stitching I could get anyway.

[bikermutt07]

And that is great thinking. Practice pieces make us look better than we are.

[Stetson912]

Stitching looks great to me. As for cutting soft stretchy leather, I find a rotary cutter works nice. More downward pressure like chopping rather than lateral slicing style cut keeps it from stretching and being cut wrong. At least for me. I'm sure a rediculously sharp knife would work all the same too with enough pressure on the straight edge to keep it in place. I have problems cutting softer and thinner pieces  still but the rotary cutter helps me out. 

[DarrelT]

1 hour ago, Stetson912 said:

Stitching looks great to me. As for cutting soft stretchy leather, I find a rotary cutter works nice. More downward pressure like chopping rather than lateral slicing style cut keeps it from stretching and being cut wrong. At least for me. I'm sure a rediculously sharp knife would work all the same too with enough pressure on the straight edge to keep it in place. I have problems cutting softer and thinner pieces  still but the rotary cutter helps me out. 

I used a rotary cutter on it too. This material is particularly spongy and stretchy. The difficulty for me was getting the pieces the right size so they line up.  All good though. I'm learning.