Solo Leatherwork: New Pouch

[Fallan Windchaser]

40 Fall, 513AV

Having returned from a day of watching the family herd, Fallan had finally come to accept that it was time to do something about the leather bag which contained all the gear that he used every day. It wasn’t a bag full of luxuries or non essentials, it was in fact that gear which would allow him to survive, at least for a short time if he were to become separated from the pavilion and the rest of his gear.

Because it was something that he used every day it was also subject to a lot of wear and where in the past he had repaired it, now it would be easier to replace whilst he had the leather and the tools available rather than attempting yet another repair where the stitching had ripped out along a seam. Normally he would still have attempted a repair but it seemed also a good chance to exercise his skills in making something from scratch.

The first task was to look with new eyes at the pouch and to see how it had been constructed, where the seams were and so forth. Then he needed to consider if that was a good design or if it needed to be changed. This was not so easy as he was used to this one and it would require a step back to view it with fresh eyes. Then he needed to decide the most efficient way of making it that used the least leather with the least stitching but also was the most hard wearing. Some of the problems with the current pouch were he suspected down to some lack of thinking through so that the stitching on some seams were exposed.

Since he needed to empty the pouch in order to assess it properly he decided that an assessment of the contents might help with the decision making process. Carefully then he emptied it and stacked the contents to one side in no particular order so that he could make new and perhaps more logical groupings. Included in the items were;

Hollow bone poker for fire
String
Leather ties and thread
Spare flint and steel
Hand carved wooden spoon
Spare sharpening stone
Sewing kit in bone needle case
Spare tinder
Leather working tools - awl, bone fids etc

It was a simple list and did not take up too much room. Added to this list was the knife which rode in a sheathe on his belt and it was everything that rarely left his person once he was out of his tent. There were more camping items with his main kit, but most of them were more or less replaceable out in the wilderness.

He spent some time working with the items, trying them in different groups. What he didn’t really want was one big open compartment where he had to dig around, especially in the dark or in a hurry and try and find one item in the jumble of the others. Some things like the sewing kit he was pleased with, though he noted that this too needed replacement as the bone had somehow started to crack. He probably should think about making something for his leather kit too. He had bought a leatherworking kit a long time ago, but most of that rode with his camp kit. What was in this kit should have it’s own holder.

[Fallan Windchaser]

With the current bag now emptied he finished his examination with one of the bag itself, reminding himself of all of the repairs which had been made. Some of them were down to over stuffing it with things whilst out and about and that was something of an issue. The bag needed to be small otherwise it was inconvenient to carry, ideally it should always be able to sit on his belt and balance the weight of his knife.

That gave him new food for thought, for if some of the reason for over stuffing the current bag was because it was a little larger than he needed then the cure was perhaps to make it smaller, and to carry something else to carry other things he might collect during the day such as tinder, herbs and similar foodstuffs.

With these thoughts in mind and with some ideas about how to change things for the new pouch he pulled out his leatherworking kit and the second hide that he’d bought, which was of a slightly thicker leather than the other one which he had used to make thonging with. Most of the items that he needed to store were of relatively small size, the exceptions to which were his spoon and the hollow bone poker which he used to help start fires. Now that he had broken it down he could see more clearly that much of it was backup material such as the tinder, whilst the other items were more the sort of thing that would be useful at a camp fire. As such much of what he carried did not seem at a second glance to need to travel with him, and it was true enough that the only really vital part of his kit was the knife. With the knife almost everything in his kit could be recreated in some way with a little care and attention. But having it would make life more comfortable and this was where he had come down to.

The reduced size of kit reinforced the idea of one or perhaps two smaller pouches, but the two longer items precluded that. He considered the two items more closely for these were driving him towards one direction which was contrary to where the other items pointed. The poker was useful but was it really essential to carry round? And the same with the spoon, for it’s length was dictated by his cooking pot, but if he didn’t have the pot then did he need the spoon? The spoon seemed an easier choice for he realised that two spoons might be the right way forward, a longer one that rode with his pot and a shorter handled one that would fit in his gear. That left the poker and that one he was more torn on, but in the end he found it hard to justify always carrying it round and so moved it instead into his main camping kit with the longer spoon. He would need to carve a shorter spoon to add into his kit.

[Fallan Windchaser]

With the resolution of these two items he could now proceed for the pouch was smaller than he had planned. For now he decided to keep the original pouch as it was and make some repairs later, either donating it to the Pavilion or incorporating it into his main camp kit, perhaps as storage in a larger pouch.

Marking out was always somewhat difficult for he needed to measure how large he wanted it and then make the pouch to the same size. He reorganised the small pile of kit, stacking it and then measuring with some twine to get a feel for the dimensions and then worked with the new hide to find the best place to cut it from taking into account the grain of the leather and to leave as much workable leather behind for another project with as little waste as possible.

He considered two different choices and then made his decision. Using the end of burnt stick from the fire he carefully drew out the shape of the pouch, leaving room for the seams and for the closure as well as the sides. Often he would insert the sides as separate pieces as this allowed a softer or more flexible piece of leather and often meant that scraps could be used up for them. But he wanted to minimise the number of seams and to make the pouch as sealed as possible so a single piece of leather seemed to be the way to go.

The string was used to recheck all of the measurements because once he had made the cuts it would not be possible to go back and do it again. He firmed up the lines and measured once more just to be sure then using his freshly stropped knife cut free the section of hide on which the design sat, the rolled up what was left of the hide and stowed it away.

The cut out piece could now be folded somewhat as a last minute check to see that all of the dimensions worked in practice and he both piled his things in as well as tested it against his belt. Because he had incorporated the sides into the design it would be necessary to shape the pouch first, he could not rely on the seams merely holding it as the leather would be pulling against them and this was a strain that he didn’t want in the piece. With his knife he carefully sliced along the remaining lines.

With the piece now fully cut out he could now fold the leather into the new shape and decide how it would finally fit together. He realised that there would need to be some changes to take account of the seams and he would certainly need a form of some sort to make it work. Wood was always at a premium but he reckoned that as the pouch was small he would get away with borrowing a piece of firewood for the task, so setting the leather to soak in water he found a piece of wood and whittled it into shape as the leather soaked.

With his form to go into the pouch and the now softened leather he was able to wrap the leather around the block of wood and mark the leather where he needed to make some adjustments in order to get the seams into a position where he could push the awl through and then be able to sew the seams up.

[Fallan Windchaser]

With the minor adjustments made Fallan now had the piece ready to start sewing it together. Leather was difficult to sew though and it was necessary to make the holes in the leather first with an awl, so the next part of the construction was to mark out where the stitches would fall on the back and base parts of the pouch. This would be what he would sew the sides to, leaving the top and closure to then fold back over the front.

The front needed to be shaped but he could only do that if he was able to tack the front in place as he worked and for that he needed the sewing holes in the back to be present. The starting point was to carefully scribe a line with the point of his awl were the stitches would go and he did this by first judging the place and then setting the awl in his fingers so that when he pulled his hand down the side of the leather with his smaller fingers on the edge, then the point would score a straight line that followed the edge, which he had previously also made sure was as straight as possible when cutting it out.

With lines scored along the edges of the back and base he then took some time in marking out where the stitches would fall. He used a round ended awl for this in case he changed his mind about where a stitch would sit. By marking them out beforehand he made sure that the stitches were even and properly filled the space. Technically it would not change the effectiveness of stitches nor pouch if they were not evenly spaced but it would make a great deal of difference to the appearance of it and was one of the factors which would decide if the pouch looked as though it were made by a professional or an amateur.

With the stitch positions marked he then placed the leather down on the ground so that the leather was supported and the point of the awl would not hit anything hard and started to cut the holes. The awl had a straight cross section behind the point so that it would cut slits that the thread would sit in. He angled the awl diagonally as he made the cuts so that all of the stitches would lie evenly for this too was a factor in how neat the end result would be.

He rewet the leather, it did not need to be soaked, and then with some thread cut and threaded onto a needle, he placed the wooden form in place and folded the leather over it. This part was a little tricky for he needed to get the first stitch in the right place and it wasn’t easy as he needed to push the awl through from the back, through one of the existing stitch holes and then bring it through the front layer of leather in exactly the right place. With the cut in place he could push the needle through and tie it off. He repeated the process on the other side so that both sides were now held in place.

[Fallan Windchaser]

There were always several possible solutions to a project and this wasn’t how he had made the sheathe in which his knife now sat in his belt. This was however how he’d been taught by his brother so that the shaping of the pouch was done first then the stitch holes cut so that only once the leather had dried to shape was it sewn up.

With the initial stitches in place he now had the challenge of getting the sides tucked in properly which would be a slightly fiddly job. Almost he regretted not leaving the bottoms of sides open, but that would have meant that anything small that might come loose in the pouch could fall out and get lost. It might well happen the he couldn’t get the corners tight enough so that there would be a small gap there, but it was a limitation of the design that he’d chosen and now that he was this far into the making he began to wonder if he should have chosen this design and not simply gone with the more common choice of making the front part as a separate piece which was shaped and then stitched to the back.

It was too late for that however and he would have to live with the consequences. It wasn’t his intention to cut all the stitch holes into the side parts yet; he needed just enough to hold the leather in place for the shaping and cutting of it. With that in mind he carefully pushed the leather into the corner with a bone folder from his kit and worked it down so that the leather started to adopt the sharp corner that he needed so the the end part of the side would sit tightly against the back. Holding it in place he pushed the awl through from the back about another third of the way down and then double checking that the side leather was correctly positioned he pushed the awl all of the way through and then placed a stitch to hold it in place.

He repeated the process on the other side and then placed stitches at the very top part so that the whole would be as rigid as possible before turning his attention to the more difficult lower part. With the top stitches in place he could now fold the top part of the leather over which helped in keeping the wooden shaping block inside and pressed down against the base. Using his bone folder he applied pressure around the main part of the leather to force it into the correct curves where it folded under the base and then up the back. The stiffness of the side was now starting to mean that it was getting in the way and so he made the first short and tentative diagonal cuts into the corners to relieve the stress of the leather which was being forced into a tighter curve than it was easily possible for it to do. The folder worked to assist here and he used it to create a crease along the sides for the inner corners.

The design meant that the front panel was slightly narrower than the back and bottom by the width of the seam and gradually he was able to push the leather of the back seam into the sharp corner that he wanted, placing a stitch near the bottom and cutting the diagonal slit a little closer into the corner. Soon he was able to put the first of the two stitches into the bottom and cut the corners into shape. With that it was time to allow the leather to dry somewhat so that it would hold its shape whilst he worked on the top and fastening.

[Fallan Windchaser]

Cutting the pouch had inevitably led to here being some offcuts of leather and most of them very oddly shaped indeed. He would keep the larger pieces and some of the smaller that seemed as though they might be promising but in the end there would always be more waste than he could think of ways to use.

Not all went to waste though and in creating the fastenings for the pouch there were endless ways to be creative. A larger and narrow piece would form the strap that tightened down the top. He had seen some interesting ways of achieving that aim, but given the rigid walls of his pouch, it wasn’t going to be the sort where the top might act to winch down the contents of a more flexible pouch that might be empty one day and over stuffed the next. All that he needed was a wide strap down from the top and a toggle of some sort sewn to the front that might fasten through.

From the small pile of trimmed leather he chose the strap and drew upon it a design with a rounded end that would allow it to be securely attached to the top leather with a broad stubby part that projected below and in which he would cut a slot for the fastening. In the rounded part he marked out and then cut the holes for the stitches. Holding it against the top cover of the pouch he centralised it and then when he was happy it was all square and properly positioned he pricked through the holes in the strap so that he could see the dimples in the leather of the top cover. With the awl he then cut through the top leather and then cut an appropriate amount of thread and threaded on both needles ready for the sewing on. Choosing an end he started two stitch holes back and pushed on needle through so that the thread was centralised, then pushed the first needle through the next hole closest to the end. The second needle pushed past from the other side and then he pushed and pulled both through and pulled the thread tight. Crossing the needles ensured that their sharp ends did not penetrate the thread trailed by the other needle which could cause a knot and prevent the tension being pulled tight.

The needles crossed in the next and last hole and then reversed their course so that he then sewed carefully back over the previous stitches, locking them in place and then entered into virgin territory where only the awl had penetrated before, the thread sealing the two leather parts together, the stitches continuing until he reached the other end and the strap was held firmly on. Sewing back two stitches the then wove the needle between the two pieces of leather and cut off the thread.

Using his knife he cut a slit in the strap with rounded out ends which would allow the toggle to pass through. The toggle he carved from a piece of horn that he had been saving, narrowing down the centre to create a waist around which the thread would attach. With the strap pulled down tight he marked the front of the pouch where the slit in the strap would come and then punched two holes close by. Using the needles he created a loop of thread through these holes and then up and around the toggle leaving enough space for the strap and to be able to fasten it through the gap in the leather then he passed it round several times to give some thickness before wrapping the thread around and around the loops to create a stiff and relatively thick piece of thread which would take the abuse of being put through the strap and was then tied off. This like the pouch would be treated with grease to waterproof and to lubricate.

[Fallan Windchaser]

Construction of the pouch now approached its end for he needed only to create loops on the back and then to stitch up the pouch for it to be done. The loops on the back were done in the same way that he had stitched on the strap to the front. The most difficult part of it was in lining the loops up properly so that the pouch would sit at the right hand and square on to his belt. Once he’d arranged that then it was merely a matter of cutting two strips of leather then marking up for the stitch holes and cutting through. Lining up the straps on the marks he’d made on the back of the pouch he carefully pushed the awl though the cut holes on the leather which would form the loops and then with the loops removed to complete the cuts though the leather of the back.

Sewing up was again a matter of cutting a suitable piece of thread and putting a needle on each end. Pushing a needle through two stitches back from the end he equalised the thread and then double sewed to the end and back over his own stitches. This was harder than the strap because the loops restricted the movement of his fingers and of the needles making pay closer attention and sometimes in using the bone folder to help push the needles through when he was unable to get a proper grip on them.

It was harder still to finish the stitches in the restricted space for now the needles needed to get though holes already filled with thread, but to lock off the thread it needed to be done and so he pressed on regardless. The second loop he approached with less enthusiasm given the difficulty of the first but it needed to be done and would most certainly not do itself, nor would the task get easier if delayed so he took a breath and committed himself. Practice it seemed helped for it was not as bad as he had expected and now the pouch had the loops, strap and toggle attached, so it just needed sewing up.

The task was identical to what he had already done, though it would be made more difficult by some of the stitch holes not properly matching up but since the process was the same it wasn’t as bad as he might have feared to make the attempt. A suitably long piece of thread with both needles and starting at one end of the pouch he worked his way along, removing the temporary stitches as he came to them and pressing in with the bone folder to sharpen the corners, cutting in just a bit closer with the honed edge of his blade to get the fit tight in the inned corners and he was soon able to sit back and contemplate his work. Some things he would change when he made the attempt again for there were some lessons learnt but on the whole he was happy for now he had a new pouch into which he loaded up his gear, though there was still a note that he needed to replace and make some more things.

[Taylani]

XP Award!

Fallan Windchaser:

XP Award:

• +5 leather working
• +3 sewing

Lore:

• Marking out: Measuring to ensure the pouch is the same size
• Leatherworking: Measure twice, cut once.

Notes:

Comments :

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TAYLANI