Playing with Leather

I have been wanting to play around with sewing leather for quite a while. This challenge plus the fact that my husband would like a light weight leather jacket inspired me to try it out. I didn’t want to get as involved as a leather jacket would, so I decided to dip my toes into the water with something smaller. I decided to look for a sewing pattern that would allow me to use it as a small design feature. I found Lekala 5897 and figured a dress with a yoke would be perfect for the amount of leather I had and what my goal was.

The dress itself did not turn out for a number of reasons, but sewing the leather was much easier than I expected! Here is a few tips for anyone that is wanting or curious about sewing with leather:

• Sew a test garment– This is very, very important! If I had muslined the top part of the dress I would have realized that the yoke was about an inch too wide for my shoulders and I might have been able to fine tune the contour darts.
• Use a leather needle
• Use a long stitch length and check twice, stitch once- Stitches too close together will end up with the thread slicing the leather up and the same thing can occur if you have to sew a seam more than once.
• Your walking foot is your friend!

I didn’t finish the dress because of the fit issue, but hopefully the next one will be even better. I meant this one more as a wearable muslin and I learned a lot from sewing it up as far as I have. Check out my blog for more details!