How to Hand Sew Leather with a Square Corner

1. We will practice marrying two pieces of leather together that are same size squares. We will groove and chisel them separately and then sew the leather together.
2. Take our first piece of leather and drop in a groove line on two sides where the lines will meet in the corner. We will run the groover right off the edge for this practice piece. Do the same process to the matching piece of leather on its face side. Typically, we would bevel and slick the edge so putting the grooved line right to the edge would not be an issue.
3. Now let’s start to chisel. Take one piece of our square corner leather and the 1-tine chisel. Exactly on the corner groove, drive a tine hole with our tine handle slightly leaning toward the outside corner. (Watch video above).
4. Now take the 2-tine chisel and line up one of the tines in the corner hole and gently just mark it by aligning it in the groove hole and gently tapping the chisel once. Do the same with the other side of the corner, but just mark it don’t pierce the leather, yet.

5. Now let’s take the 6-tine chisel and put it in the second marked hole from the corner. Feel it sink into the groove line. Tap the chisel, piercing the leather and making the stitching holes. We’ll work our way out to the end. There may be enough room for a single hole to finish the end. If so, grab the 2-tine chisel, put the first tine into last hole and mark it. Then use the single tine to make the hole. Repeat on the other edge of the leather. Now you should have two stitch lines that meet at the corner.
6. Grab the other piece of the square leather and do the same process as above. You can line up your first chiseled leather piece to the piece you are working on and eyeball it to make sure it looks spaced right, but this process should make them line up nicely. When you start stitching, they line up more.
7. It’s time to start sewing leather by hand, but first some tool tips and info.
8. Tool talk:
   • A stitching pony or sewing pony is an immense help to hold the leather while we sew. For us crafters, the stitching pony allows us to clamp it on our table. We are also able to clamp it in all manner of configurations that helps us not to fatigue our arms and it keeps our hands in a natural position.
     A stitching horse or sewing horse is different as it allows us to sit on it while sewing.
     Chuck Dorsett suggests putting some leather pieces on the top of the stitching pony to protect our leather projects from dings. See video above.
   • Ritza Tiger Thread. You get three basic colors in the kit, but it is also available in a variety of beautiful colors. Ritza thread is a very strong braided thread and one highly recommended by Chuck Dorsett.
   • John James sewing needles are extremely strong with a large eye so the big waxed thread can go through it, and they don’t have sharp points.

How to Hand Sew Leather with a Rounded Corner

1. First, take one of your practice pieces of leather and mark a round corner and cut it with a utility knife.
2. A leather project with rounded corners requires a different process to make sure our rounded corners match. For our practice, we will glue our backing onto our face leather. It would be very difficult to cut two leather pieces that are flopped with a round corner that matches.
3. What we do to make matching rounded corners easier is glue the first rounded corner, face up onto the backing leather piece. Then, we use the face leather as our straight edge and cut the backing leather with a utility knife. You’ll be amazed at how clean our edge is going to be.
4. Let’s cut both of our straight edges first and leave the rounded corner for the last cut. Now, slowly cut the rounded corner by using the face leather as a guide. We can do small cuts to work our way around the rounded corner.
5. Now, let’s make our groove line on the front side. We will start at one side and groove over to the end of the other side, grooving around the rounded corner. Do not put a groove line on the backside because our chisel line would probably not line up to a groove line on the back and it would look terrible if they were misaligned. So, let’s just skip the groove line on the back.
6. Move the leather onto a quartz or marble block with our cutting board on top. It’s time to drop in our chisel line. We will use a 1/8” straight tine that comes in the sewing leather kit. It is a favorite of Chuck Dorsett’s, but we could also use a 1/8” diamond hole chisel.
7. Note about stitching chisel tines: A sign of a quality tine is as the spread gets smaller so does the tine. We start with a 6-tine chisel that has a 1/8” spread. Typically, that equals 5 stitches per inch.

8. Note: 4 stitches really gets big, and 6 stitches starts to group.
9. Start on one end of the leather sample and drop the chisel into the groove line keeping the chisel straight up and down. Tap it a couple of times with our mallet. We can look on the backside and see that our tines pierce and show through the leather.
   Note: To get the chisel out of the leather do not rock it left and right because that reams open the holes. Instead, we take our index finger and line it up to the left side of the chisel and walk it out gently by going up and down.
10. Take the first tine and put it in the last hole feeling the chisel sink down into the groove line and tap it a couple of times with the rawhide mallet.
11. Now we are nearing the corner and we now choose the 4-tine. Putting the 4-tine, first tine into the last hole, feeling it sink into the groove line, give it two taps with the mallet and then pull it out.
12. Now, let’s use a 2-tine chisel by putting the first tine in the last hole. Let’s just work our way around the corner but don’t run the tine through the leather, just mark the holes around the corner. When we get to where the groove line straightens out again, stop.
13. Use the one tine chisel and make the holes, one at a time, around the corner where you marked. This will make consistent hole spacing and a nice stitch line.
14. Now, we can go back and use the 6-tine chisel on the straight groove line to finish making the stitch holes. But as we get to the edge of the leather, we need to eyeball the space we have left to make stitch holes. If we bring the last hole to close to the edge it won’t be durable. So, we may need to use one of the smaller chisels. For this example, the 3-tine chisel worked perfectly for making the last two sets of stitching holes.