North Sea Clothing Accessories

Now if I wasn't making leather goods myself and I just wanted simple, somewhat affordable, well-made leather goods, I would just buy everything all at once from North Sea Clothing. They make an incredible sweater for cold weather, but lately the collection has been growing to include some very good accessories that are all made in England by leather workers who definitely know, what they're doing.

The belt is awesome. Many great details that you might miss, unless you know about fine leatherwork or work with it yourself. The obvious is the hand stitching. It's time consuming, but it lasts longer and to me it looks a lot more beautiful than machine stitching. Other than that the keeper construction is so cool. And the fact that the buckle has had the roller replaced with a piece of leather, which is also hand sewn. The creasing (the lines that runs along the edges) is another great detail and a very English detail from the old saddlery trade.

Besides the belt which is a stand out for me there are some other good accessories, like the wallets. I especially like the Tri-fold wallet because it's not something you see very often. The "Explorer" model is well-made and beautiful, but not something extraordinary.

Tri-Fold 

The Explorer

Up until now the recipe has remained much the same. The leather is blue bridle leather, the stitching is white and the hardware is made of steel. Which is a good recipe. But I recently saw some pictures of their latest offerings and some other colours of leather was included.

Making a Sporran in Leather

I can't tell you how many times, I've watched this video. Not in order to make a sporran, but to pick up on some of the techniques, that he uses. Every time I watch it I pick up something new. First of all I know, that I've got to buy a head knife at some point and learn firstly how to sharpen it and then how to use it correctly without cutting off any limbs.

I hope, that you can get something out of this video, even if you don't work with leather.

Luckily someone uploaded the video to Vimeo, which makes sharing a lot easier. The original can be found here.

Crafts - Market Tote

It seemed like a natural progression to start making a bag out of leather. I've made a lot of smaller accessories for some time now, but never anything as big as a bag. Mostly due to the fact that I don't own a working leather sewing machine and only sew by hand, which means, that besides cutting the leather and constructing the bag, I would also have to make a couple of thousands stitches by hand - one at the time. As you probably can imagine this is a rather time consuming project. 

However it seemed like a perfect opportunity when a friend of mine came by some time ago and started talking about the need of a "big leather bag", which I turned into "huge leather tote" in my head. As I finally had a couple of days off, I jumped at the opportunity and made that "huge leather tote", that she requested.

There is nothing revolutionary about the design, and that was never the intention. However I think I managed to add some details, that makes the bag stand apart. First of all it's completely hand sewn and besides that the handles are folded and sewn together and it's not just riveted unto the bag, but both sewn and riveted and it has an internal pocket, which is left open for easy access.

As I have tried to illustrate with these pictures, it can contain quite a lot of stuff, and will definitely hold enough stuff for a weekend trip. It was constructed as a one piece construction for durability and simplicity.

The interior is very simple. One pocket without any closing mechanism for easy access.

I couldn't resist the urge to put my name on bag. As you can't punch the football leather, I had to put in a small tag of the same vegetable tanned leather as used on the handles.

As this was a bag intended for a very special person I wanted to monogram it. I decided to use some mil-spec brass stencils, that I had bought from the US some time ago, but never really used before. Of course it's rather reminiscent of naval stencils on marine army wear, but it makes sense in this case, if you happen to know my friend, so I really like this personal detail.

Stitching came out quite nicely. I used a braided nylon thread from Barbour Coats. The thread was only glazed, so I waxed the thread myself using beeswax and paraffin. A rather nice, but also time-consuming, procedure. Unfortunately I can really tell that I need to work on my edge coating skills.

The handles caused some cussing, as it really took some effort to get them right, but in the end they are also, what I like the most about the bag.

There is no padding/backing added to them, but they are made of a 3/4 mm thick vegetable tanned leather, so if they were to collapse a bit, that wouldn't matter. I wanted them to soften with wear making them more comfortable. To add to the comfort I rounded all edges and burnished them with beeswax.

For extra durability I decided to secure the handles using both rivets and stitching.

From experience I know, that solid copper rivets age really well and on top of that they go really well with natural vegetable tanned leather. Perfect combination.

Burnished edges

All the copper rivets were backed using the same leather as the body.

I just can't enough of that grain and from working with this leather I've been thinking about finding some nice pebble grain leather, like the one that a lot of shoemakers use. But I'm yet to find a good source for it.

Most of all I can't wait to see the bag in some time. I put a lot of effort into to this bag and without sounding  like a big cliché I also managed to put in some blood, sweat and tears. I really hope, that it wears well and that it will give the owner a lot of pleasure in the years to come.

Crafts - Rune's iPad Sleeve

Last summer one of my best friend's, Rune, came by to give leatherworking a go. He spent hours burnishing the edges on the belt, that he made and it was a joy seeing someone so consumed of this one thing. It was just him and the leather - everything else seized to exist for some time. Just before leaving he told me about an idea of making a sleeve for his iPad and so we did, when he came to visit from Copenhagen this weekend.

Rune made the sleeve himself - almost at least. I tried to help, but it was mostly in terms of design. The details he picked himself and of course he decided to use the most extravagant solutions. He picked the football leather from Horween and the fattest, thickest and most greasy thread, that I have in my arsenal; a thread called Nyltex. Nyltex is not a braided or twisted thread  - it just consists of of multiple strains, which makes it hard to get an even stitch, as the thread becomes either twisted or totally flat. Normally a thread, that I would use on very thick leathers and honestly I usually avoid it because it's so hard to get nice, even stitches, which is what I always strive towards.

The design is a fairly simple envelope design, but it's very functional and we added a couple of nice details.

I'm amazed by the surface of this leather. Especially this irregular pattern, that runs across the sleeve. It looks a bit like small flowers. Very beautiful.

The stitches turned out quite well considering the fact, that Rune has very limited experience with stitches, but he took it slow and was very thorough. 

Edges were finished in black using Edge kote by Fiebings. A product that I very rarely use, but it turned out quite good. It's impossible burnishing the edges of this leather.

A button stud makes for the closing mechanism. Very simple. Plus I got to use my antique leather buttonholer, which is always a joy.

The stud button doesn't come in contact with the iPad itself, so there is no danger of scratching the darn thing. And again, that texture is just something else.

I'm very interested in seeing, how this sleeve ages. The key wallet, that I made for my brother in law some time ago, has aged quite nicely, so my feelings towards this leather is becoming more and more positive, although it isn't the easiest to handstitch. 

Dahlman Architect Belt - Before and After

While attending a party with some people from my class, I noticed a very interesting belt, that one of the girls were wearing. I immediately identified it as the architect belt, that Dahlman (the avid reader will recognise it from the factory visit at Dahlman) has been making for quite some time. I of course also took into consideration, that someone could have borrowed the design, so I asked, where she got the belt. It appeared, that she hadn't bought the belt herself, instead she had borrowed it from her - stylish - dad and he had bought it many years ago.

Though the belt looked amazing, it also looked like it could do with a little TLC, so I offered to treat it and refurbish the belt.

Here are the before pictures. As you can see, the craftsmanship of these belts is sublime. The stitches are pretty much flawless. But it was in dire need of some oil, which you can tell from the fact, that the grain was cracked and damaged. It almost felt as if it had been sueded.

Here are the after pictures. I felt so bad after this, as the belt became two tones darker, than I had anticipated. And when I gave the belt back, the owner didn't look too satisfied, however I'm still gladly I did it because it felt much better and I'm sure it added even more years to the lifespan of this amazing belt. Lastly I fully enjoyed working very closely with this belt. Just by looking at the details I learned a lot of things.

The procedure is quite straight forward. I was the leather with a good, English saddle soap. After allowing it to dry it treated the belt with Neatsfoot oil and a leather conditioner. Lastly I sealed the edges as much as possible with beeswax, although I found it difficult to treat the edges of a belt, that had already been worn for a long time.

Words by Simon Tuntelder - Photos by Niels Hjorth