Bag

So I spent the weekend on a leather bag making course.

The curly stuff is the lacing and the small piece bottom left is how to start and finish - apparently.

and I appear to have come away with some meccano!

I am a bit cheesed off if I am honest.  I wanted a bag, I designed the bag before I got there, I was hoping to come away with the finished article.  However the whole of Saturday morning was spent listening to him talk about all the tools and different types of leather etc etc Saturday afternoon we made templates for our bags out of paper for stapling together to make sure we had our dimensions correct before unstapling ready for him to cut the patterns out of the half a cow.

However there were 5 of us and only 1 cutting board.  A lot of wasted time.  Very, very frustrating.

So Sunday morning I was there bright and early (9.30) as were two others bit more chat and discussion and then he laid all the pieces out on the hide to work out the most efficient cutting and keeping the spine for straps etc.  It was about 11.30/12pm before the first pieces were handed back to us for trimming.  We now had two cutting boards - the second one was big enough for maybe three people to use but still only two cutting implements.  And then for punching holes - only two implements.  Aaaarrgh.

The course finished at 4pm.  At 3pm I was really beginning to panic.  I was nowhere near done as I had an inner pocket in my bag.  The course leader said he would punch my holes while I worked out where they should go.  In the panic I made a mistake with my straps thinking there should be a buckle at the other end so had to cut off a bit more off the length (hope they are still long enough).  At 4.30pm I finally left (the last person) without it turns out punching any holes in my straps, without finishing the leather (nobody did), without having any colour on the leather (one person did) and without doing any lacing (nobody did). 

Now we knew we might be lacing at home but to not have had time to tidy up the edges and do any dyeing is a bit much.

In my humble opinion he should have cut out the patterns from the cowhide Saturday evening ready for us to do what we had to do on the Sunday morning.

Now for those others on the course that had an interest in leather making before and therefore had some tools at home, going home with unfinished leather is probably ok.  But for those like me that haven't ...

Anyway I popped into Matlock with my 'bag' and visited a leather place to buy some dye and finishing stuff and they very kindly lent me a punch set so I could do the last set of holes.  How brilliant was that?  I have done them and will return the set tomorrow.  They also gave me information on how best to finish the leather off without buying loads of equipment I may never use again.  So I am feeling a little better about how this bag may turn out.

Not convinced that I have sufficient lacing to do all that has to be done but the course leader only lives in the next village and he said no problem if more was needed.  But a lot of work still needs doing before I can assemble my meccano.  I will show you the finished article as and when but don't hold your breath