Leather Bag With Fringe Edges

A while back I made a leather field bag. The bag serves its purpose, but I wanted a bag that holds more stuff, and I wanted something with a different look. This new bag is a few inches larger, all around. It has no dividers, but it's big enough to hold a microwave oven (or enough gear for an overnight camping trip).

I've been wondering how short fringe would work as an edge treatment, and I figured the fringe would break up the outline of this bag, so it would look less like a suitcase.

For this bag I'm using 3-4-ounce milled veg-tanned leather. The "milling process" makes the leather very pliable and easy to work with. I would have preferred using lighter weight leather, but the leather store was out of that weight.

The bag doesn't have much more to it. I think it would hang better with some bamboo stays to help the bag keep its shape. I may add those later if the bag is too floppy.

Besides the leather, you'll need a marker, a sharp knife and cutting pad, leather punches for stitching, glue (contact cement), and needles and thread. A pair of dividers is also useful for marking lines; and you may also find a pair of needle-nose plyers useful for pulling needles through the leather.

For the pattern, I just sketched shapes until I came up with something I liked. I was aiming for something along the lines of a mail bag. Because the front and back of the bag narrow toward the opening, I made the middle-band flare out a couple of inches at the top, to keep the opening the same width as the interior of the bag. This makes the bag a little "baggy," but with the optional ties, the middle-band can be constricted to keep the bag from being too floppy, when empty.

To mark the cuts, lay out the pattern pieces on the leather (rough side up), and trace the outline of the pattern pieces with a marker. I had a liquid paint "whiteout pen" that worked well, but an ink marker would also work. Try every possible orientation of the pattern pieces on the leather, to make sure you’re getting the most out of your leather. Long, narrow scraps are useful for cutting laces, so don’t make any cuts that you don’t need to when you cut out the pieces.

When you're marking the parts, be sure to mark the bottom center of the back piece, and the front piece. Make corresponding marks for the center of the bottom piece of the middle-band. These marks will be where you line up the pieces and start stitching.

After marking the leather, I used some dividers to scratch line about an inch outside the edge of the pattern. This will be the stitching line and also the line where the fringe will be cut.

Stitching is a three step process: first glue the pieces together on the seam lines. Then punch a line of holes for the stitching, and finally stitch the pieces together using strong thread, with needles at each end. If you're not familiar with saddle stitching, please check one of the many excellent instructables on the subject. I would add that it's important to draw, or scratch, a line before punching the holes. For a nice appearance, keep the punches perfectly vertical, and be sure to punch the holes from the side that will show.

I like to do the gluing and stitching in stages. Particularly when stitching around curves, it's easy for the punched holes to get out of alignment, which makes stitching much more difficult. Taking it in short pieces makes it easier to line up the holes, and avoid making a mess of the glue. I made a little glue applicator from an old nose-spray bottle, and a little funnel to get the glue into the applicator: see pictures). If you don't like the mess of using glue, you can use little binder clips to hold the leather pieces in place. These don't work so well with the inch-wide fringe between the edge and the line of stitching. Overall, I think using glue makes the stitching process much easier, as the pieces stay in place better when you're stitching.

The stitching for this bag goes pretty quickly. First, punch, glue, and stitch the three middle-band parts together. Then line up the bottom center mark on the middle-band with the bottom center mark on the back piece. Glue, punch, and stitch the bottom seam, beginning near the middle and stitching toward the outer edge and up the side to the top. Take a break, and do the same with the front part, being sure to start at the middle-bottom and work your way up to the top.

For the last bag I made, I included "tabs" with holes punched for laces so I could tie a jacket or poncho to the outside of the bag. I liked that idea, but for this bag, I'm just leaving some inch-wide gaps in the stitching, so I can feed the laces through from the inside, if I want them.

The fringe can be either fine, medium, or wide. I decided to go with fairly fine fringe, about the same width as the stitches. I just eyeballed the cuts, as there are way too many of them to bother measuring and marking. Where the edges of the bag are curved, I just tried to keep the cuts radial to the curve and hoped for the best.

At the top of the bag, where the middle band parts meet the top, I cut a line of fringe, fanning it at the corners. I'm not sure if I like this, but it's easy to cut it off if it gets in the way.

Try to cut as close to the stitching as possible without nicking the stitching. If a stitch gets cut it's not a big deal, just add a couple of over-stitches through the same needle holes to hold the seam together.

I didn't have enough of the 3-4-ounce leather to make a shoulder strap, but I found a piece of 2-3-ounce leather that was big enough in my leather bin. Because the 2-ounce leather is thinner, I made the strap wider than I otherwise would have. After trimming, the piece of leather I had was narrow at one end and wide at the other. For no particular reason, I just split this trapezoidal piece down the middle, and stitched the wide ends together (after squaring them up) to make the shoulder strap. The pieces are overlapped about 5/8-inch and the seam is glued and a punched for a double-row of stitching.

to attach the strap to the bag, I punched oblong holes for lacing, in both the bag and the strap, using a plastic template that I made for another project. I put three pairs of holes in each side of the bag, and seven pairs of holes in each end of the strap. The strap can (with difficulty) be shortened or lengthened as needed.

As mentioned, I left inch-wide gaps in the stitching at several points so I could pass leather thongs through for tying a jacket to the outside of the bag. I don't really need the ties, as this bag turned out so large that I could fit my jacket inside (along with a blanket and a couple of pillows).

Not counting the fringe, the finished bag is 14-inches tall, 18-inches long, and 8-inches wide.

I want to put a coat of dye on the bag, but I'm having trouble finding a dye that can be shipped through the mail.