Handmade Leather Satchel

Hi Makers!

I have been working with leather for quite a bit now. I usually make things like wallets and other smaller items. Nevertheless I also made a couple of satchels, that I want to share.

Please excuse that the pictures of both sachtels are a bit mixed...

I made both satchels about a year ago and they are designed to hold just a standard 13 inch laptop from a famous brand with a fruit in the name.

I normally use vegetable tanned leather for all my projects. The leather comes in its natural color and I do the coloring myself (don´t worry, this is not hard to do or dangerous).

The tools I use are pretty standard and evrything is hand sewn and punched

You will need at least:

- A regular box cutter

- Water based or oil based leather colors

- A sponge to apply the color (can be really any sponge)

- Punching irons in any size

- An automatic sewing machine (hand sewing, sounds way more automatic then it is ;) )

- Leather yarn (I use 0.6mm)

- Metal hardware of your liking

- Sand paper for the edges

- Edge coating (optional)

- Material for the inside (I use filt, also optional)

- Leather glue

I always start by cutting out the individual pieces. You could also color the leather in the first step and then cut your shapes (that of course works the best if you already have a pattern)

To cut the shapes i use a simple metal ruler and a box cutter. "WATCH YOUR FINGERS" :)

The leather color is applied with a sponge.

NOTE: please make sure to wipe or spray the leather beforehand to make it a bit moist, this helps a lot to get a regular color distribution! I also color the leather additionally from the back (this ensures later that if you scratch it, it wonßt show natural leather colored (white-ish) scratches

First things first! Depending on the complexity, punching the holes first might be the better option! In this case I glued them together and then punched for most of the parts.

It is advisable though to glue on and already sew the smaller parts, since we might not reach them afterwards

Now comes the part you might hate :) Because I would estimate that just punching and sewing a satchel like this is around half a week of work (if you are quick)....

To mark the lines where you want to punch and swe, you can use all available means. You can draw them on with a ruler and some pencil, or use a grover (like I did) to get an indented line.

I would conclude it´s a fairly easy project, also for beginners! It just needs minimal tools and a lot of your time :)

Thanks for checking it out and feel free to contact me if you are stuck in a step!