Wallet-Making Take 2

So, I didn’t have enough left of that nice thick dark leather that I was planning to make my billfold wallet out of. But I do have this lighter, thinner leather that I think would make a nice minimalist pocket style wallet.

Something like the Journeyman offered by Tanner Goods [Here] would be ideal.

Seriously go take a look at that fancy shit, it’s beautiful. Now obviously I’m not expecting mine to come out so nicely. After all this is my first time doing any sort of leatherwork really. You can’t expect to paint a masterpiece the first time you pick up a brush :U  In any case I decided to base my design off of this since it looks easy enough, and being mechanically minded as I am I figured how it’s put together pretty easily.

For my wallet, just cut up two pieces and matched them up as best I could but uh… Now I know why the pros use a hydraulic press with a cutting mold, whereas I used a metal straightedge and a box cutter. So the mirror image isn’t exactly there, close enough though.  Next I cut up two more sheets to act as the outside ‘pockets’.  One I accidentally cut horribly short  and while I realized that I could totally flip it and make a sort of sideways pocket, I opted for the lazy/minimalist option and decided that one outside ‘pocket’ was good enough for me P:

Next came the all important part of puncturing the leather for the needle and thread to get through!

I pulled out my awl and mowed through the bottom edge of my first big piece, using only the awl and a whack with the palm of my hand. Now I know why the pros also have either strong ass sewing machines or a the very least rawhide mallets. Ow. So then I realized that I had to make sure somehow that these would line up right with the other pieces.

For the first line I just lined up the pieces as well as I could, inside out, and stuck my sewing needle through the holes in my first piece, to lightly puncture the second piece. I would use these little holes as a reference were to place the awl and punch through.

 

You can see pretty good the difference in size of the awl holes and the needle marks. The next step was to pin the corners together using some thumbtacks pops had lying around and poke the rest of the holes to match the second piece, and then follow suit with the sides of the pockets that would get stitching.

The thread I’m using is a durable heavyduty thread in a sort of steely silver that I’ve used in the past to stitch simple book bindings early last year (the books didn’t warrant such a thread but my mother was pretty adamant). And I think it’ll contrast nicely with the color of leather that I have. So after punching through the leather scraps, it was time to sew them together!

I did this by hand as I don’t have any kind of sewing machine at the moment, not to mention i don’t even know you can do this kind of thing with a sewing machine. The stitching may not be perfect but it’s more than strong enough to hold this thing together hopefully for a long time! Or at least long enough for me to purchase more leather and try again =D

 

Now, unfortunately when I got to the ends I had no idea how to knot them up properly. So I just tried to wing it. But uh… That proved itself a bad idea pretty quick as one of the knots started coming undone immediately. So I resorted to supergluing the knots into place.  Next time I’ll put more research into that part =w=;;;.

It should hold for a good while though and I can re-stitch it if need be. The only thing I need to figure out now is sealing the outside edges together so they don’t pull up. I noticed when I put them in my pocket one of the layers on the corner likes to catch and pull up so I’ll have to figure out how that’s done.

But, a project  completed and I’m super pleased with the result!

 

Busy busy busy

I was initially planning for my next post to be about my next wallet attempt but it’s been a little over a week since then and I haven’t had the time or opportunity to reattempt.

Look forward to it though, I’m sure looking forward to making a new wallet haha!

In any case I’ve been busy mostly with work during the weeks which I anticipated. But I didn’t anticipate so much to be happening over the weekends for this month! Last weekend pops and I headed out to visit my grandmother from the 9th to the 11th. It was a short trip because well, pops was really only going for an event and his lady hasn’t been feeling well so she was staying home this time. We head out again the 28th iirc and we’ll stay for a whole week with some of my other family members coming up to visit.

So the morning of the 9th we woke up bright and early and got on the road by 9 am. Drove a good 500mi (well, pops drove. I played with the radio and we talked lots.) and arrived by 7pm. Chicago traffic was hell it took us 3 hours to get through the city whereas usually it only takes us an hour and a half… We arrived in time to still get in on some good ol’ Wisconsin Friday Night Fish Fry (I had catfish) and pops was complimented on all the weight he’s lost and I was complimented on finding work so quickly.

A few relatives stopped by gma’s house on the 10th to see us and see gma and have lunch and all that good stuff. I ended up falling asleep on the sofa whilst we were visiting but I woke up in time to see them go so no one held it against me haha. (They provided me the excuses of being tired from work, and from the drive, which were both true, but regardless.)

Then the morning of the 11th came and we were on the road by roughly the same time I suppose, I don’t remember exactly. But the time change wasn’t on our side for returning home so we just ate awful things, drive thru, etc, and got home in time to crash for Monday morning.

A fast and exhausting weekend to be sure!

After that, it’s simply been back to work and taking care of general life stuff so I haven’t had time to craft. Monday I drove around to find an item for another project Ive been working on, Tuesday was grocery shopping, and Wednesday I went to a friend’s book event! Yesterday was the uninteresting but oh so necessary cleaning day.  So perhaps today or saturday since sunday I’ve got plans too!

August is such a busy month!

Technical difficulties with analog crafts

So I had some scrap leather I purchased (though if I’d known just how ‘scrap’ it was I never would have paid money for it.) and I recently read this post by artofmanliness.com. So, having some energy and free time this evening I decided to try my hand at it! I printed out the blueprints full size and cut the D piece out of my nicest biggest scrap using a simple box cutter.  I had one of those nice fiskar self-healing cutting mats underneath it too. It started pretty well and my cuts were clean… but then I noticed something…

It was WAY TOO SMALL!

Now, this piece is supposed to be the outermost layer of the wallet and thus the biggest piece. When I realized that it was roughly the size of a dollar, I also realized i had made a horrible mistake.  Upon rechecking things out I found out that what I printed was pretty much completely off-scale and to top it off, after realizing this, adjusting, and checking it against my scraps again, I didn’t have any solid scraps big enough for that largest piece :T

So suffice to say I’m a bit disappointed, and I’ve added Leather to the list of things I’m going to buy when I get paid haha.

Although I’ll be checking my other pieces to see if I can’t make another type. Maybe a phone pocket slim wallet or something other than a billfold but we’ll see!