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Tutorial: Sewing on Leather

How to Sew on Leather Tutorial

Leather can be a tricky material to sew on. As I gave it a shot this evening I quickly encountered a few of those problems.

For my first attempt I decided to try a hem. The first problem I noticed was that the standard sewing foot was not allowing leather to slide freely and was causing the leather to bunch up as I sewed. Since that didn’t work I tried what any hot blooded person would do. I ripped the stitches out and did the exact same thing again. User error right? Well yes and no. Same results.

So I went back to the drawing board. For my next attempt I loosened the tension. Limited success. Leather still bunching.

So I reached deeper into my bag of tricks. I asked my wife.

When she wasn’t quite sure, I searched the internet. I found quite a few articles that mentioned I should be using a leather foot for our machine. Whoops. Who knew. They then went further to say I should be using a leather needle. Double whoops.

Seeing as I had neither and all of the stores are closed. I continued searching. I managed to find an article that advised I should put baby powder on the leather which will allow it to slide under the pressure foot freely.

Well let me tell you, it worked but, after about two inches of sewing I realized it was way too messy and could cause too much damage to our machine. Plus I didn’t like the fact I was leaving white finger prints on everything I touched. Call me crazy but, I don’t like to leave evidence when I’m raiding the cookie jar and white fingers prints on the canister and a white substance in my beard tend to be a dead give away.

At this point I was at a lost. So I started thinking. Why not use tear away stabilizer? The more I thought about it, the more I thought it might have a chance.

So, I lined a piece of stabilizer up with the edge of the material I was hemming and gave it a whirl. So far so good right? A little further. A little further. Three inches in, I new I had a winner. I was able to hem the entire length without any snags, bunches or any general badness.

Now the big challenge, can I get the stabilizer out? Since I was using tear away stabilizer I took one edge and attempted to tear it away by pulling it across the hem line. This left me with a pretty clean edge and only a few frays of stabilizer. I repeated with the other side of the stabilizer and was left with only a few fuzz pieces here and there. From there, I pulled the remaining pieces out by pulling them through the stitches. (Imagine you are looking at the stitches at eye level from the side. Each stitch would look like a upside down U. Pulling the stabilizer from the sides you would be pulling the left over pieces through the “U”).

This left me with a clean hem, no bunching and my blood pressure still in tact.

Things to try:

Use a leather foot
Use a leather needle
Loosen your tension
Lengthen your stitch distance
You can also try to apply baby powder on the surface of the leather that will pass under the pressure foot. Try at your own risk as the powder can and will make its way into the mechanical parts of your machine
Place stabilizer on the surface of the leather you intend to stitch on.
Use a teflon foot.
Use heirloom stabilizer to reduce friction between the sewing foot and the leather.

So if you are faced with attempting to sew leather or leather like material give these ideas a try. Your mileage will vary.

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