Completed Leatherworking II

[Nya Winters]

Timestamp: 54th of Fall, 516 AV

Nya had so much more to learn. The Kelvic was glad she had her book, her kit of tools, and a huge roll of various leathers to practice on. She needed learning this craft to occupy her time. Nya needed to keep her hands busy and her mind engaged. If she didn’t, the woman would just trade skin for fur and disappear into the jungle like she had for bells and then days on end when she’d first come to this land. But she didn’t want to run wild. Baser instincts drove her back to civilization and back to people… even if at first she could barely speak to them. The Founders had changed that, slowly, surely, engaging her in citywide activities and reminding her of how to pretend to be human.

It took a full season, maybe even longer, to come back.

And now that Nya was back, she was comfortable again on the fringe of the city, interacting slowly with the people more and more. She wanted to have things to trade with them other than meat. Food was for all intent and purpose plentiful. Nya wanted to be valuable. She wanted to make things others could use and more importantly enjoy.

Leather seemed to be a good option. Hides were as plentiful as the meat if one knew how to save them. And slowly, Nya was learning. The more each of them learned and provided for the Settlement, the less the settlement would need Riverfall or other places… even trade with the Svefra. And so towards that end, Nya was willing to take the day to learn a little about sewing and lacing.

The Kelvic opened the book to the section on Stitching and Lacing and began reading. It turned out there was only so many ways to join to pieces of leather together. One was stitching it. Another method was lacing it. Stitching was useful for soft supple leathers that were light and sturdy. While lacing joined heavier thicker leathers. Stitches were permanent as long as the stitching held while lacings could be tightened, loosened, and pieces completely taken apart to clean… such on wristbands or armor.

Lacing really had only one method… while stitching was complex. There were a dozen or more types of stitches one had to learn to make, and none of them were exactly easy for someone like Nya who’d never done any sewing a day in her life.

Then, beyond that there was lacing and thread to consider. Lacing should match or compliment the heavy pieces it would be binding. Stitching needed to be accomplished by thread that would blend in and become invisible unless the goal was a contrasting decorative stitch. Nya, knowing what she knew about leather, felt other types of things such as stamping or carving the surface was far more necessary for decorating than just outlining stitches. Nevertheless, the book recommended thread used on seams be matching to the leather to help blend it in. It also pointed out when the stitches will show, either matching or contrasting thread was an option. The take home message was that not only did the Kelvic need a wide assortment of leather, she needed thread of a wide variety of color as well. Nya wondered if she could buy it a colorless white or tan and just dye it as she needed to use various colors. Syka precluded big selections of anything since the jungle reclaimed what didn’t move once in a while and the weather and heat tended to ruin things that sat around a lot.

Nya had wondered how stitching was going to go with leather. Most of it felt too thick for a simple needed and thread to be pressed through. There had to be other ways. And indeed, as she read further in the book, there turned out to be great ways to deal with the heavier weight and thickness in contrast to cloth. As Nya continued to research, she learned more about it.

Stitching, it seemed, could be performed on both soft and heavier leathers. The working of it, however, often required serious preparation. One tended to shave off the edge in towards the garment approximately a quarter of an inch. This was helpful because when working with thicker leather and more than a couple of layers, it lightened the seams so they more uniformly matched the thickness of the garment. The idea was to use a skiving tool with strong vertical strokes to remove up to half the total thickness of the leather along the edge on the flesh side. It was best to be cautious while using this methods because leatherworkers – especially new ones – tended to stretch and warp the leather out of shape completely and very easily. Nay wondered if skiving the leather off made the garment weaker, but her reading and research seemed to indicate that once it was joined with another piece and gathered with stitches, there was no compromise in strength.

Some leatherworkers even used adhesives made from boiled animal hooves to hold it together long enough to sew the leather straight. It seemed the more Nya read the more she realized the use of adhesives was a personal choice and in a lot of ways she felt a crutch. Depend on the glue to hold the leather straight so you could pay more attention to your stitches than your overall project. Glue wouldn’t always be available so Nya decided she’d be on the side of people that didn’t use glue but minded the whole project until the whole project was joined together. Half of this craft dealt with attention to detail and that was something she really loved.

After preparations, perforations needed to be made. Nya enjoyed the play on words for a few minutes, laughing and the enunciation as a breeze darted around her where the Kelvic sat. Nya was in her beach tent, the flaps up, getting air in all directions, and enjoying the shade. It was a hot day today, far hotter than she had expected, so Nya was taking advantage of the cool breezes playing in the waves and calling them into bring much needed air to the otherwise stifling coast. Getting more comfortable on her chair, Nya lifted a leg onto a nearby crate and read further.


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[Nya Winters]

It seemed one needed to make perforations in the leather between 1/8th and 3/8ths of an inch into the edge of the garment. The holes would fall on the shallower or deeper side of the measurement based on the thickness of the leather and pattern. Thicker leather required wider holes. Thinner leather you could make neater smaller stitches. A stitch marker was then used to determine where to place the perforations. In a pinch one could just hand measure all the holes with a tape if one didn’t have a stitch marker. The actual perforations were made with an awl. One had to not only pay attention to how far apart the holes were, but how big the holes were as well. One used an awl to punch the leather to make the hole, but then a fid awl could be used to make the holes bigger if bigger holes were required. Her reading recommended determining the hole spacing by having the holes roughly equal to their distance from the edge of the project. The overall look just seemed to be more professional if all the measurements were painstakingly done.

One bad thing about leather was that each piece sewn had to be measured and perforated separately. One could not sandwich the two layers together then do all the measurements on one piece. Instead, one completely measured and perforated a singular edge then after finishing, turn it face down on the edge where it will be attached and mark through the holes to make the corresponding holes on the other edge. Nya thought this tip was sound advice and decided she’d use the method herself in order to get perfectly matching perforations.

In leatherworking, needles were less important than they were in actually sewing cotton garments for example. One simply used a blunt pointed embroidery needle. In a pinch, one could weave a piece of fine wire onto the end of the thread for sewing. The needed didn’t have to be sharp. It didn’t have to pierce the leather. The awl did that. All the needle had to do was guide the thread through the holes. That was a nice realization.

Leatherworking took all kinds of thread. One could use cotton, wool, and waxed, even thin leather. However, the best thread for leatherworking was something called button hole twist. It was a sure find in the mercantile and had a strength and nice appearance that complimented leather well. Her instructor, the book, also suggested she use enough length when she sewed that she would not have to be joined. Joined threads were weak threads. One wanted a solid piece of thread all the way through ones sewing.

Another unusual tidbit was that unlike traditional sewing, leatherworking put in stitches and laces from the left to the right…. the same way someone read a book for example. In traditional sewing it was just the opposite.

Night fell just as Nya finished the section on introductions and got down to the nitty gritty of how to actually make the stitches. Her first example had a diagram showing a flat piece of leather and a thread weaving through it uniformly. This was called a Running Stitch. It seemed it was the most common form of leatherworking stitch and one of the easiest to sew. Nya, eager to try, cut some smaller pieces of leather - big enough to place a hot pan on solid wood without ruining it – and measured and marked where perforations would go. Nya then lit a lantern because it was getting dark, and then took her awl and pre-punched the holes all around the potholder. Then, following the directions, she carefully placed the needle between the leather and the down through the fourth hole from the end. She left an inch of thread between the two pieces, and tied it firmly with a knot. Then she took the needle and began to work it from one hole to the next and back to the first hole working to the left. AT this point, she began working to the right having ‘set’ her stitches in the first few holes so she wouldn’t have to worry about the thread fraying or being pulled out after the project was done. She then took off running with her needle, eager to make the rest of the stitches. It was easy sewing, pushing the needle up one hole, moving it right, then pushing it down through another. She made it all the way around the leather pot holder and once she hit the first set of stitching she’d done, the Kelvic repeated the process and sewed back along the way she’d come a few inches to lock in the stitch.

Nya was pleased. She now knew the running stitch and had a completed potholder she could trade to someone in the mercantile.

Flipping the pages of the book, the next stitch was called a cobblers stitch. It was the type of stitched used when working with leather and requires two hands and two needles. One set up the leather in a vice-like device that acted as a second pair of hands and gripped the piece so the leatherworker could use both hands and both needle at the same time. Nya fetched her stitching horse, measured and perforated another two scrap pieces of leather, and fitted them into the horse. The horse she could hold with her knees as she sat, freeing up her hands and eyes to really practice the stitch.

First she cut a length of thread equal to approximately three times the length of the seam. She began by drawing half the thread through the first hole to the left then she threaded the other end onto the needle. At this point she took the top thread down through the second hole and brought the bottom needle up through the same one. She then took, following the diagram in the book that was a hand sketch, the top thread in her left hand and the bottom thread in her right, and drew them firmly but not too tightly to put too much tension on them. Pulling up all the excess, Nya continued this method to the end of the line of leather in the stitching horse and examined her work. The Cobblers Stitch looked to be a good one. Nya was pleased at its usefulness and how well it looked.

The next stitch was called a faux cobblers stitch. Nya was curious to see how that one was accomplished.

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Nya looked over the diagrams and how-to in the book and noticed immediately that the imitation or faux cobblers stitch provided a very similar look to the cobblers stitch but it looked a whole lot faster and easier which was important if Nya wanted to make things that would look good but cost her minimal effort in the long run. The more time something took to make, the more the craftsman had to charge to make their coin. Nya knew the residents of Syka would take functional over fashionable any day so the faux cobblers stitch was a good option to cut costs and time and get a cheaper product into the Mercantile.

So, to being with, a thread is used that is cut three and a half times the length of the seam. Nya nodded to herself, read on and set the book aside to gather more materials. She laid out two scrap pieces of leather and traced her right hand on one. She cut out the hand pattern with sheers and then traced around it to get a second layer. Then she cut that ‘glove’ out and used her grover to cut a channel around the edge of the gloves to do use to practice the faux cobbler’s stitch. Taking the awl, she pre-punched uniform holes all around the gloves and then set them up in the stitching horse to hold her work together. Threading the needle with the thread, Nya got to work. She pulled the threaded needed up through the last hole at the right and left as much thread as equaled the seam hanging. Then she carried the needle across the top and put it down the first hole at the left. A loose length of thread now laid over the top of the perforations. She brought the needle back up, following the books directions, and poked it through the second hole. She passed it over the thread then back down and continued in this manner in the same direction on each hole. When she got to the end of the seam, most of the thread which was left hanging had been drawn up. She tied off both hands, inverted the gloves and tried them on. They fit well and were an easy project.

Cutting out a dozen more, Nya worked diligently on them, knowing that by using the fawn colored leather she could dye each glove in patterns or carve decorations on them before she sold them to both get practice in and up her price a bit more.

There were other types of sewing. Nya thumbed through the book picking out a few that would work for her. One she was drawn to was a ball stitch. The stitch finished to edges together flat that were butted up against each other and were often used to create balls and attach harder leathers together. The great thing about the ball stitch was that it laid flat because of all the prep work a leatherworker had to do on the piece before they even started sewing. The other benefit about the ball stitch was that it was elastic and flexible, meaning the seams could give a little and let someone wearing or playing hard with the leather bend and twist it. It was well suited for wrapping around cylinders and for sewing leather into place on objects.

To do a proper ball stitch, like other stitches, there was a lot of prep involved. One had to use an edge beveller and bevel front and back on both sides of the leather pieces. The book explained that it allowed for a tight connection that lays flat. Nya had to agree. Once the pieces were beveled, a stitching groove was cut on the abutting sides of the leather. Then a punch was used to perforate holes along the groove.

Nya decided she’d wrap a rather large diameter but hollow piece of bamboo for her project and attach a bottom to it so she could put things in the leather vase she wanted to display…. anything one could put in a glass vase one could put in a leather vase besides liquid. The more she looked at it the longer she decided to make it, capping not only the bottom, but the top in order to make a very sturdy map case. She’d start selling them to the mercantile for people wanting to buy maps there.

So setting the book aside, she went to get a length of bamboo of a proper diameter and cut it to length. A handsaw came in handy. Older bamboo tended to be hollow or easier to hollow out so she looked for that kind and soon had a rough inside shape ready to cover with leather. She laid out another piece of her scrap leather and marked where the bamboo started, rolled it along the leather, and marked where it ended, in order to make a straight cut. She made the cut a tad bigger than she thought she might need to because while the bamboo was mainly smooth on the outside, it was possible to have bumps or flaws that might need more leather to go over its circumference. Once it was cut to shape, Nya rolled it onto the bamboo and checked the edges to make sure they came together nicely. For the most part the piece was fine, but there were overlaps and places she had to trim to get it just right.

Nya put the bamboo aside, laid out the leather, and followed the book directions for cutting the bevel and then grooving and punching the holes. It was easy work that gave her a lot of time to think. In that, she enjoyed her work, making things that people would find useful and sturdy. Had Aressa felt the same way about her magecrafted items? Nya wasn’t so certain. Leather was a simple pleasure. Magic was something far more advanced.

She took set aside the project, picked up the book, and read on.

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[Nya Winters]

It was time to cut the thread for the project. The book advised over and over again to be generous with the amount of thread you cut. It often stressed the seriousness or splicing together thread just because one ran out. Such splices caused weakness. Oddly enough the splices themselves weren’t the weak part, but the thread on either side of the splice tended to get stressed more than normal thread and that created weakness. So when it was time to cut the thread for the mapcase, Nya looked at how much it called for and almost balked at its suggestion of eight times the length of the span to be stitched. The mapcase had a lot of length! Nya shook her head but followed the directions anyhow, unrolling her thread and cutting at the eight times mark once she passed it up and down the seam that many times.

Ball stitches were unique. They took needles at both ends. So Nya threaded one needle on the right end and one on the left end. She then inserted one of the needles, selected at random, through the perforation at the end of the first row of holes. She pulled the threaded needles from front to back through the first row of holes, one each on the abutting side of the leather. She adjusted the thread so each had an even amount sticking through. The book went on to describe anchoring the thread down with a double loop. She took one of the needles, looped it around the back side to the opposite hole, and pulled it through to the front She then continued to loop over and over again through the first hole it was brought through rom front to back. The loop she formed anchored the thread and held the stitching in place.

The first stitches looked like two simple lines through the leather almost like a metal staple in wood doubled up. She then followed the books directions and made the first stitch. She brought one needle up through the seam in the middle from back to front, and then went through the next stitch hole, down to the opposite side, and pulled the needle through from front to back. Easy enough. The second stitch was as easy. Nya just repeated what she’d done a moment ago but the opposite way to complete the first row. She then pulled the other needle up through the seam in the middle from back to front, and through the next stitch hole down on the opposite side, pulling the needle through from front to back. The effect was a rather dashing set of back and forth patterning that never criss-crossed.

It was nicer doing the stitch because she could use one needle at a time and didn’t have to stitch using two together. She continued stitching the case across until she got to the very last hole, bells later, and finished with a double loop. She looped the right needle back to the opposite hole and pulled it through to the front. She continued to loop over and over through the first hole from the front to back, making sure the hard work was anchored.

Nya did the sewing on the bamboo tube. The Kelvic was glad she did because there was no way the ‘case’ would have fit on the bamboo she’d cut to cover after it was sewn. It would have been just too tight. Finishing off the sewing, Nya tied off the two ends with the needles both on the backside. She used a standard knot twice on both ends.

Then she took one random end of the bamboo and grooved and perforated that area. She held the tube up on its end to trace around it, and making it a little bigger, cut the circle out and grooved and punched it as well. In no time she had another baseball stitching run going and she had her bottom on her mapcase.

For the lid, Nya would have to do something different. Another sewn on end wouldn’t work. In that way she would have to cut another small circle of bamboo slightly larger yet big enough to fit over the current leather wrapped tube. Then she’d have to wrap the shorter piece with leather as well, cap its ends, and the place ties on it to hold it in place.

So for the next bell Nya repeated what she’d done on the longer tube with the shorter tube. She cut the leather, thread, and did all the prep work before she began to sew. Eight times the length of thread was cut and then the base leather was placed around the ‘cap’ and sewn in place. Next the end was sewn on. And finally she finished off with something the book called a string envelop closure. She decided on three of these for the cap to hold it on. It looked like a series of two buttons, one on the main cylinder and one on the ‘cap’ which could be affixed to each other via a string that one wound around each button. Letter carriers used them to fasten their correspondence pouches and important people in cities placed documents to be signed in large leather envelopes that were then sent by courier around the city.

First she took out one of her punches that was exactly the right size for the buttons. She picked two inch in diameter ones. She lined up the punch, struck it hard with her mallet twice, and popped out a ‘button’ leaving a round hole in the scrap leather. She repeated this step five more times until she had six ‘buttons’. Next she measured across them. At the half inch mark and at the inch and a half mark she made a dot with her charcoal stick then grabbed her awl. She forced the awl through the buttons at both places, doing all six, and then setting the awl aside. Next she lined up where she wanted the buttons and marked them on the longer of the two tubes… the body of the mapcase. She punched out the stitch holes, which was difficult but thankfully not impossible since the bamboo the leather was wrapping was somewhat hard.

Nya repeated this for where the buttons would go on the cap.

Then she carefully lined up the stitch holes of the button and body and on the button and cap, and began to attach each button with a careful hand stitch. She made sure she looped the thread through each of the pair of holes at least twice and then tied them off with a sturdy square knot. Once she had all the buttons tied on, she assembled the closure by using the thread snips and cutting a length of waxed twine three or four times the length of the space between the two string closures. Next she tied one end of the string to the leather button on the cap using a standard knot. She secured the knot down and then was able to slide the cap on the map case and twist the string around each button to secure it in place. Pleased with herself, Nya admired her handiwork before moving on.

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[Nya Winters]

Before she moved on to learn more stitches, Nya wanted to completely finish the map case project. IT needed a simple strap that could be affixed to it in order for the mapmaker or map user to actually carry it. The case was far too long for a standard backpack and most backpacks didn’t have ties that would hold up such cases along their sides.

Nya thought, at her skill level, simple was best. Straps would wear faster than anything else on a map case, so she decided a very simple self-adjusting strap that could be used in all sorts of situations was best. It could hold the case or anything else the owner of it wanted to bundle into a long tubeular shape and carry… including blankets to the beach to sit on, extra clothing, rolled up tarps, or even mapcases.

The book had an example project of a cleverly folding and strategically placed hardware strap that would teach her new techniques. The strap was one inch wide cut from vegetable tanned leather. Nya used a scrap of the same leather she’d used on the map case and laid it aside. She got out her strap cutter and set it at one inch. The Kelvic got to skip the step of using the straight edge to cut the guideline for the strap because the map case had been long and it had already created a nice straight edge for her to run the strap cutter along. Lining up the leather, Nya gripped at the top and before long with pulling the strap cutter downward, she had a nice long length of strap to use on the mapcase.

She got out her really sharp precision knife and cut off the strap ends straight. Unlike the sides, they were ragged and looked worn. Then she measured and marked four rivet holes on each end of the strap. She marked the points in the exact center of the strap, one at ½ inch from the end and one at 7 ½ inches from the end. Once marked, she got out her rivet hole punches and used her mallet to punch out a number two hole where each punch was marked. Next she got out her rivets, taking four and setting them aside. Nya looped the ends so the two holes lined up on one end. Then she put the male end through the hole, lined up the female end, and hit the rivet hard with her little mini sledge hammer. She repeated this riveting process with the other end so now she had a long length of strap with two loops at the end.

Before she called the project done, Nya wanted to try yet another technique. She wanted to burnish the edges of the strap. According to her instruction book, burnishing edges was one of the highest expressions of leathercrafting, meaning it was a sign that a professional not an amateur was at work. If one burnished the edges, it would create a high shine, sealed in edge that was polished with friction and moisture. This helped protect the wear and tear on the leather, making it last longer and look far better for a greater length of time.

Burnishing egan with beveled edges. She took a sharp edge beveler that was as wide as the leather was thick, and dragged it up both edges of the strap, removing the edge from both sides of the area to be burnished. The next step called for dying the edges, but since Nya hadn’t decided on a dye yet, she needed to skip that step. The book actually said if one wanted a contrasting edge color, it was fine to skip that step because it would look like a purposeful detail to bring out some beauty in the piece.

Next, wax from a block in her kit, was rubbed on the edge of the leather. It smelled of honey and Nya could tell it was pure beeswax. She applied it by lightly running the block of wax along the edge of the leather repeatedly until it felt smooth and silky. Then she took what was included in her kit and called a burnisher and began to rub the edge of the leather with it. The burnisher looked like a three inch coin with a hole cut into the center. It was flattened, but where the edge was, instead of it being grooved as coins often were, it was indented so one could roll it along the edge of the leather with the edge one wished to become burnished pressed into the groove. The surface friction of the burnisher eventually polished the edges of the leather. She rubbed the tool vigorously up and down the edge until the leather developed a uniformed polished appearance. It was a lot more work than it looked described in the book, but Nya really enjoyed the way it was done when she was finished.

The book also talked about running out of wax and what could be substituted. It turned out her forest was full of things – mostly saps and resins – that could be made from raw materials out in the jungle and applied to the leather to do what the wax was doing. And some of them, like the gum tree resin, would inhibit mold just like the beeswax did. Nya was pleased at that thought. If for some reason they stopped trading with Riverfall, there was no beekeepers here in the jungle to trade for wax.

All but done, the last thing Nya had to do was actually attach the strap to the map case

To use the strap, Nya threaded the right loop through the left and pulled a length partiall through. Then she pulled the left loop back through the right loop all thew ay. She loosened the large ends until they would fit around the map case’s main body, on the sealed end, and one gripping just beneath the cap. Then she pulled the center to tighten. The strap was sturdy and well made. And it was a clever design so it could be used over and over again.

Nya took the rest of the pale vegetable tanned leather, cut it into one inch straps and spent the rest of the evening working on more flexible carrying straps. They were actually easy to make, would sell fast, and she could dye them multiple colors as well. That finished off her evening, leaving her next day for more stitches and maybe even a lesson or two on dying leathers.

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[Nya Winters]

Grading

Leatherworking +5, Planning +5, Researching +4, Sewing+5

Lore: Leatherworking: Types of Stitches (Running Stitch, Cobbler Stitch, Faux Cobbler Stitch, Ball Stitch), Leatherworking: Types of Lacing, Leatherworking: When to Stitch and when to Lace, Leatherworking: Perforating Before Stitching, Leatherworking: Which Needles To Use, Leatherworking: Which Thread To Use & Why, Leatherworking: How to make gloves, Leatherworking: How to make a bamboo leather covered map case, Leatherworking: String Envelope Closure, Leatherworking: Simple Carrying Strap, Leatherworking: Burnishing Edges

Garments Made: Leather Gloves (x13), Leather Covered Map Case, Flexible Carry Staps (x10)