Now that you have gathered all the materials for your tote bag, the next step is to collect the equipment that you will need to sew the bag. You might think that you need a ton of specialized equipment to sew leather, but that is not the case – all you will need is your regular (domestic) sewing machine and a few additional pieces of equipment, all of which can be readily found online or at your local craft store.
So without further ado, let’s get into the list.
Leather sewing machine needles
The first thing you’ll need is to get some leather sewing needles for your sewing machine. Leather needles have a special cutting point to help cut the leather as the stitch is sewn, and they are readily available in most online fabric stores and local craft stores. (For example, you can get Schmetz leather sewing machine needles here.
Walking, Teflon or roller foot
Next, you’ll need to get a presser foot that allows the leather to feed smoothly into your sewing machine. Regular presser feet will stick to the leather, so you need a presser foot that allows the leather to glide smoothly into the machine. There are a few feet that fit the bill: you can use a walking foot, which ‘walks’ or moves over the leather; you can use a Teflon foot, which is coated so the leather can glide smoothly; or you can use a roller foot, which has a roller embedded within the foot to allow the leather to move underneath the foot.
If you don’t want to invest in any of these feet, then you can get by with a regular presser foot if you place tissue paper above and below the leather. The tissue paper will allow the leather to glide into the sewing machine without sticking to the presser foot or the bed of the machine. Once the seam is sewn, you simply tear off the tissue paper to reveal the seam.
Binder clips
When sewing with leather, you can’t use pins because they will leave permanent holes in the leather material. Instead, I hold pieces of leather together using binder clips from the office – these clips hold the pieces together while sewing but they don’t leave permanent holes in the leather like pins do. Best of all, you can get binder clips from any office supply or convenience store, and you can reuse them to organize your papers once you’re done with your leather project.
Rubber cement
At many points during the construction of the leather bag, you will need to temporarily glue the leather pieces together before you stitch them together permanently. For situations like this, I use good old rubber cement, which can be found in any craft store or hardware store. To use, I simply brush some rubber cement onto both of the surfaces that I want to glue together, let dry for a minute or so, then press the pieces together. If you don’t get the positioning right the first time, simply pull the pieces apart and try again — rubber cement will allow you to reposition the pieces a few times before it loses its adhesiveness.
Leather glue
At other points during the construction process, you will want to permanently adhere one material to another; for example, you might want to glue the lining material to the exterior leather. For this purpose, you will want to use a permanent white leather glue, which you can find at most of the major online leather goods stores (for example, you can get bottles of leather glue from Tandy Leather in various sizes). My advice? Buy the big bottle if you think you’re going to get into leatherworking – you’ll go through this stuff much faster than you think.
Heavy-duty thread
Ordinary all-purpose sewing thread just isn’t strong enough to withstand the stress that is placed on leather bags, so I use upholstery thread instead, like this one from Coats & Clark.
Thread burner or lighter
Unlike in garment sewing, when sewing leather pieces, the start and end of the seam is not secured by backstitching. Instead, the thread is typically either secured with a knot tied by hand, and the remaining thread tails are trimmed and then melted down into a ball that forms a ‘plug’ that prevents the stitching from unravelling. I use this handy little tool called a thread burner to do this; the real pros use a lighter to melt the ends instead.
Edge paint
Finishing the edges of leather goods is very different from finishing the edges in sewing. Instead of overcasting stitching at the edge, or folding over the edge of the fabric to conceal the raw edge, the edges of leather goods are typically painted with a special thick paint called “edge paint” to conceal the raw edge. (More on this later when we get to the post on edge finishing.) I’ve tried several brands of edge paint, and my favorite by far is Giardini edge paint. In my experience, other brands’ edge paint tends to be too watery and the resulting edge usually is not perfectly smooth and the texture of the underlying edge tends to be show through the edge paint. With Giardini, however, I find their edge paint is thick enough that it ‘fills in’ any crevices or minor imperfections in the underlying edge, with the result being a nice smooth finished edge. The Buckle Guy offers Giardini edge paint in a small 30 ml size (enough for one tote bag) and in dozens of colors. If I am using the regular Giardini edge paint, I like to apply a few coats of the Giardini dense base coat first, as this helps fill in the imperfections and ensure that there is a perfectly flat surface to apply the final edge paint to.
You’ll also need something to apply the edge paint. Many online leather stores sell tools like this edge paint roller or paint applicator, but I personally like to use triangular makeup sponges to apply my edge paint. They are really cheap and they work really well because they have a nice flat edge that applies the paint evenly onto the leather edges. They are also disposable, so you don’t have to wash them after each use like you do with the paint roller or paint applicator.
Sandpaper
To help the edge paint adhere to the leather edge, you will need some sheets of sandpaper with different levels of roughness (some medium and some fine). We’ll discuss this in more detail in the post about edge finishing; for now, just go to your local hardware store and get a few sheets of 500 grit and 1000 grit sandpaper.
And that’s it! We now have all the equipment we need to make the large tote bag. Let’s move on to cutting out the pieces of the tote bag and prepping them for construction…
