Stitchless Leather Bag Workshop

Hey there. So yesterday was an early start to head across to Bristol for the Stitchless Leather Bag workshop with Esther Keen from Leather, Needle, Thread.

There were five of us for a three hour workshop to make a leather bag without using any thread. All we used was leather with the odd rivet to hold certain pieces, such as the strap, together. First order of the morning was to select our piece, or pieces of leather from the plethora of colour and different tanning types. As you know, I am drawn to colour so it was clear I was going to choose some bold colours from the many shades available.

Others chose to use black, a lovely rich chestnut brown, a lighter mellow brown and a dark brown and mint green combo. Esther had four or five templates we could opt to make. Three of us selected the hexagon base bag, the other two settled on a more traditional envelop style.

Here are my leathers; bright yellow, a rich deep blue and a bold red for the strap. We all set about cutting around our templates with a scalpel and then cutting out sections for the strap with a slot punch.

Once completed, we could then set about connecting the sections with the strap. This was quite tough as it is snug within the punched holes and it is fed through two pieces of leather, so there was a lot of wiggling back and forth and the odd muttered cuss word when it wouldn’t budge. Following this was applying a catch or button called a Sam Brown. I believe the name of the catch is linked to the belt of the same name from the army. I also added the name of recipient of this bag using a set of punches to deboss the leather.

And finally, the strap was joined together with a buckle and holes along the strap to make it adjustable. And there we have one bag.

Here you can see mine on the left and one of the other students on the right.

You can see more sequential images from the morning in the little video below. I can thoroughly recommend a leather workshop with Esther. If you are not local to this part of the world, checkout what you have local. Working in leather makes for an interesting diversion from yarn. 🙂

12 thoughts on “Stitchless Leather Bag Workshop”

Lovely leather. Fabulous work 😎

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Jamie@hookthisweavethat says:

01/12/2019 at 9:50 am

Thanks

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Very interesting – I do love a good workshop. My husband indulges in leatherwork but stitches it all – mostly by machine but sometimes by hand – your method looks a lot less labour intensive and the results look good.

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Jamie@hookthisweavethat says:

01/12/2019 at 9:53 am

They are fun to do and explore new crafts. What sort of things does he make? I would like to go on the rucksack course which uses stitching on machine. Next year I think.

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1. tialys says:
  
  01/12/2019 at 10:48 am
  
  He’s made handbags and laptop bags and he has a jacket on the go at the moment. The main reason he bought the industrial sewing machine though was to recover all the cushions on our sofa. The base of the sofa is leather and still good but the seat cushions were all covered in fabric and, after 14 years, they are looking tatty so he’s remaking them all in leather. It’s quite a big task as it’s a huge corner sofa but I don’t think it really needed to have taken him quite so long. The temptation to make other things along the way got the better of him but, being a procrastinator of the first order myself, I can completely empathise. Although, I have finally (after 3 years) resorted to a bit of nagging as I would like to see the sofa finished in my lifetime.🙄
  
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2. Jamie@hookthisweavethat says:
  
  01/12/2019 at 11:18 pm
  
  Wow. Impressive. I shall watch out for the gran reveal celebrations online … one day 😉
  
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