Making a bifold wallet (Updates with pictures during progress)

[Danne]

Cleaned and completely finished:

 

[blue duck]

Very very nice. Great attention to detail. Thanks for sharing.

 

[paloma]

very good! very clean great work!

Edited September 4, 2020 by paloma

[Danne]

34 minutes ago, blue duck said:

Very very nice. Great attention to detail. Thanks for sharing.

 

Thank you

12 minutes ago, paloma said:

very good! very clean great work!

Thank you

[Sheilajeanne]

   You need to give lessons to most of the rest of us! That is just so clean and professional looking!

[heinb]

As a total novice I am amazed 

[Danne]

3 hours ago, Sheilajeanne said:

   You need to give lessons to most of the rest of us! That is just so clean and professional looking!

Thank you.  It was scary with black thread on orange and also a new thread I haven't stitched with before. And i'm not 100% satisfied with the interior stitching, but a lot of things is possible to improve with planning. Like making good drawings, make sure my skiving knife is sharp, paint those extra layers of edge paint for a better finish. But when it comes to stitching it's a little bit of a lottery for me, sometimes the result is really good, other days decent other times not so good. I'm happy with the result, and I know the result is good, but I tend to put most focus on what I can improve instead of appreciate how I have improved my results. 

 

2 hours ago, heinb said:

As a total novice I am amazed 

Thank you

[Alaisiagae]

16 hours ago, Danne said:

I'm happy with the result, and I know the result is good, but I tend to put most focus on what I can improve instead of appreciate how I have improved my results. 

I do that all the time with my own pieces (I focus on the imperfections and what I could do better), though my work is a far, far distant cry from yous! Your bifold looks superb, thank you for taking the pictures and sharing your progress. I'm still amazed how you got those creases in the pockets, and your edge painting is gorgeous. The dark orange really stands out, it's very vibrant and bold.

Edited September 5, 2020 by Alaisiagae

[Danne]

11 minutes ago, Alaisiagae said:

I do that all the time with my own pieces (I focus on the imperfections and what I could do better), though my work is a far, far distant cry from yous! Your bifold looks superb, thank you for taking the pictures and sharing your progress. I'm still amazed how you got those creases in the pockets, and your edge painting is gorgeous. The dark orange really stands out, it's very vibrant and bold.

The important part isn't that things have to be perfect. I think this is the best. "Be happy with your improvement, but never fully satisfied, and always try to improve things" When I crease those pockets I "heel and toe with my iron. First with very little pressure to define the edge. Then I do it two times with slightly higher pressure, But since I have very little contact with the iron on the smaller sections, I also heel or toe at the longer parts to get a consistent crease. You have seen my edge painting tutorial here? It's basically how I do it, of course I always try to do smaller changes to get better results. Ps if you follow that guide and crease after the first layer of paint, do it on a test piece first. Because it works with some leathers, and some color combinations and it also depends on the creaser, if you have a creaser that round of the edges it's nice to paint before creaseing because you get a nice rounded corner with good adhesion of the paint.

[paloma]

you hammered the seams?

it helps to close the awl perforations.

Edited September 5, 2020 by paloma

[Danne]

58 minutes ago, paloma said:

you hammered the seams?

it helps to close the awl perforations.

Yes they are hammered down. 

[battlemunky]

*slow whistle*

That is some ridiculously nice work @Danne. Thanks for taking us along. If you get around to it one day, please show us how to skive like that. 

[Danne]

7 hours ago, battlemunky said:

*slow whistle*

That is some ridiculously nice work @Danne. Thanks for taking us along. If you get around to it one day, please show us how to skive like that. 

Thank you I don't have a stand for my camera so hard to set up and show. 

[Spyros]

Hey buddy can you set the bar a little lower pls I'm kinda scared to even start my wallet lol

[Danne]

1 hour ago, Spyros said:

Hey buddy can you set the bar a little lower pls I'm kinda scared to even start my wallet lol

I take it as a compliment, thank you. But in my opinion a perfect result isn't what should be important, but always trying to improve something. 

I have a couple of things on this wallet that I want to improve, will I improve everything on the next wallet? no but I will improve something.

I give a couple of examples that I would like to improve.

1. The exterior crease outside stitching, isn't perfect on the interior. My iron either tend to burn/cut the leather, or with lower heat it doesn't make a crease that is defined enough. So I will look for another iron.

2. The stitching, I plan to X-stitch (punch from both sides with the same iron before assemble, so I get the same slant on all stitches. 

3. Work on the corner stitching so the last stitch isn't straight.

4. Getting a splitting solution and make card pockets slightly thinner and full width and lined.

[EdJ]

Great job.  An exercise of thinking through all the steps before you start.

[YinTx]

Truly exceptional work resulting in a very fine leather wallet.  Thanks for taking the time and effort to detail the work so the rest of us can learn to improve our work!

YinTx

[Danne]

1 hour ago, EdJ said:

Great job.  An exercise of thinking through all the steps before you start.

Thank you. Yes I spend a lot of time trying to plan everything well to avoid mistakes, and end up in situations where the stitching doesn't match up and such.

[Danne]

1 hour ago, YinTx said:

Truly exceptional work resulting in a very fine leather wallet.  Thanks for taking the time and effort to detail the work so the rest of us can learn to improve our work!

YinTx

Thank you. The method i've used a lot to improve is to never do things if I feel unsure about the result. Like creasing the card pocket tops (with a regular creaser FN2, not FC) which means I have to "toe and heel" when I crease. The result gets better when I feel confident when I do it, and don't hesitate. So what do I do? I have practiced this on scrap pieces until I get the result I want. I remember someone said it was impressive that I have improved so much when I haven't done a lot of projects. But even though I haven't done a lot of products, I have stitched, creased and painted A LOT of edges on scrap pieces. Which is also good because when I do a project I don't try new things, I stay in my "comfort zone" with methods. But on scrap pieces I can try something that probably will not work as good, but it's worth trying.

[sgriffithwv]

I don't even know how to make edges look that good.  Wow.

 

[WyattEarp]

Really great work and very clean.

>Jesse

[Danne]

3 hours ago, WyattEarp said:

Really great work and very clean.

>Jesse

Thank you

[mason1800]

Nice work!!

[Danne]

2 hours ago, mason1800 said:

Nice work!!

Thank you

[Scoutmom103]

Beautiful work.   Thank you for sharing all of the pictures