Leather Gloves #1

This morning was my first attempt at glove making/sewing on leather. I will follow their progress with subsequent posts. I am using the basic pattern from glove.org and custom fitting them for hubby.
First up, what I have:

• 1 piece of sueded chamois - this is a very soft/thin piece of leather, I believe this one is goat, it also happens to be light tan
• Leather needle - I need to buy another one, more on that later
• Thread - yeah, we'll talk about that too

What I have found that I need:

• More leather needles - not only because they need to be sharp, but because to saddle stich I need 2 at a time, might buy an awl, don't think I need it for this project though
  
• Leather tape - double sided, doesn't leave any residue
• Synthetic thread - advice I've found is that cotton threads rot out the leather, MakeThemYourself has a great chart for which threads are the easiest to work with, I'll be buying rayon.

This morning I learned quite a bit about sewing with leather:

• The smaller you make your stitches, the more the leather falls apart.
• Pin holes will never disappear - this is the reason for the leather tape (while you are placing the pattern/cutting) and it also means I had better be sure about where I'm placing my stitches, note above.
  
• And that cotton and leather apparently don't play well together. This wasn't apparent while I was stitching, but a little research has told me that in time they cause each other to rot out.

My largest problem when I started sewing this was that the leather started to shred around the stitches when any tension was put on it. It looks like I can solve this by doing 2 things. First, increase the stitch length, I was trying to make the stitching stronger but apparently that's not the way. Second, I was using a blanket stitch, will try saddle stitching instead, that seems to be the recommended way of doing this.

So, off to do some shopping!! I will post pics a little later.

KittyWampus Sewing

NOTICE: Do not, under any circumstances, attempt to baste a through leather strap, 2 layers of canvas weight cotton and Timex stiffness interfacing using a rubber thimble and quilting needle.

For some reason this warning never flashed through my mind and so the first post for KittyWampusCrafts is at least appropriately themed with the title!

When you are then pushing that needle through all of those layers (btw, it went through twice with no incident) and all of a sudden you think "hey, this is going a lot easier" that would be the time to stop applying pressure until you double check WHY it suddenly got easier. Believe it or not, your finger is a lot easier to poke through, nail included, than you think. And impaling yourself isn't as hard as it sounds.

Next notice: When you then suddenly realize that the reason the pushing got so much easier is because the needle is now through your finger, don't jerk away to pull it back out. Jerking only makes holes bigger.

Now that we have covered the basics of how not to do what I did tonight...Hello! Welcome! I hope to bring you many more pearls of wisdom, though hopefully not all at the same expense.

The needle and thimble in question should not be blamed, they are really my favorite of each. And for their intended purposes they are absolutely great. Their intended purposes would be embroidery and bead work though, not leather working.