Leather is a practical, natural material. It is suitable for the manufacture of shoes, clothing, haberdashery and accessories. However, compared with fabrics, the range of leather products is not so large. It is not always possible to find the model you like exactly in size.
Not everyone is ready to remake it for themselves. This is not a fabric. Not everyone knows how to flash skin. But, as it turns out, it's not so complicated. If you know what tools for working with skin are needed, then even without enough experience you can get to work.
Material Features
The skin, depending on the purpose, can be of different thicknesses, finish and quality. If it is painted, then it should not get your hands dirty. On the cut, its entire thickness should be the same color without a white strip in the middle.
A layer of skin is not a rolled material, it is a skinned animal. It tends to stretch, depending on the direction of the applied effort. At the withers it is more rigid, laterally - malleable.
The skin is divided into grades: shoe, for clothing, haberdashery. You can highlight several more of its varieties: lining, velor, suede, with a polished front surface, with fur. Techniques for working with all of these materials have their own characteristics.
A common point is that the cut parts are not swept away with threads. The sewing needle leaves marks, and it is impossible to remove them from the skin. Therefore, it is worth carefully considering every detail, the order of work, and only then get down to business.
Tool
A sewing needle for handmade leather should have a wedge-shaped point, most often with three faces. It can be of different lengths and thicknesses, with an eyelet suitable for the cross-section of the thread. In hard to reach places, a curved needle may be used.
The awl is used with a convenient handle, the tip should repeat the cross section of the needle and can be either trihedral or diamond-shaped. When punctured, the skin fibers should not be torn, for this you should constantly monitor the sharpening of the faces. Threads are chosen strong, synthetic or linen waxed.
It is convenient to use a copy roller for marking punctures. Its gear wheel when pressed leaves a distinct point mark. You can sew at marked places with different frequencies: into each mark, through one, two, three - depending on the need.
Sewing skin needles may injure your fingers. If you develop the habit of working with a thimble, you can greatly ease the work and protect your hands from punctures.
In the process of sewing, scissors, a shoe or office knife, a plastic or wooden base, a metal ruler, punches, a small hammer will come in handy.
How to stitch the skin manually?
It is not worth starting work without preliminary marking if there is a goal to achieve an even and accurate seam. It is best to use a copy roller, but you can use a gear ruler.
A simpler sewing method involves pre-punching the stitch holes. The option is more complicated when, before each puncture of the skin needle, the hole is pre-marked with an awl.
This method requires practice, to achieve uniform tension of the thread and an even seam will not work right away. But after the holes made by the punch, you can not be afraid of distortions, the main thing is to monitor the uniform tension and not get off the thread of the thread.
How to sew leather so that there are no tears in neighboring holes? It is not necessary to part, the strength of the seam can only suffer from this. But an excessively long stitch will not provide sufficient bond strength.
Hand seams
How to stitch the skin with the most durable connection of the parts of the material? The strongest seam is saddle, they sewed saddles and harness. It is performed by one thread simultaneously with two needles alternately towards each other from different sides.
A moccasin stitch is good for both joining and finishing. The needle is drawn from itself, a stitch is made to the right from the back side and returns to itself. Then the thread is thrown over the rib and is wound into the first hole towards itself and inserted into the second with the formation of a stitch on the front side. Then the process repeats. If desired, everything can be repeated in the opposite direction from the end of the seam. In this case, the binding will be in the form of cross threads.
How to stitch skin with fur? To do this, use a furrier seam from right to left. After laying the fur, the needle is held from itself, the thread is thrown back over the edge and a second puncture is made into the same hole. After everything is repeated with a second stitch.
In the manufacture of caskets, cases or suitcases, where connections are used at an angle of 90 °, a seam “on the mustache” is used. The edges of the parts to be sewn are then cut at 45 °.
Secrets of Mastery
To pre-join the two parts, you can use rubber glue. After trimming flush edges of the material, it is possible to make an engraver on thick leather on both sides of the groove before rolling the roller. This will make the seam more professional and keep the thread from abrasion. To determine how much to deviate from the edge of the material to the puncture, summarize the thickness of the parts of the stitched material.
Needles for leather with a saddle seam with ready-made holes after the punch will not catch the threads if their ends are dull. This seam will be neat if you keep order. In this case, the thread with the needle located on top is held first. At the end of the work, you can roll the connection with a marking roller - all irregularities will be smoothed out.
Starting and ending the firmware, you need to fasten the seam with stitches up to 3-4 times in the opposite direction. Having melted and pressed to the skin the short-cut edges of the threads, you can "tightly" fix them from blooming.
How to flash skin on a typewriter?
The main problem is that the material does not extend under the presser foot. Loosening the spring tension does not help. Some get out of the way by lubricating the surface of the skin with soap, shampoo, petroleum jelly, and even machine or vegetable oil.
Others place strips of paper, tracing paper and a thick film under the foot, followed by its removal. You can try sticking a piece of double-sided tape to the sole of the foot, if this is a one-time need.
Another problem is that the upper part of the skin stretches when sewing, while the lower, on the contrary, “sits down”. In this case, it is better to fix the layers with glue or use office paper clips.
An ordinary needle can “take” only soft, thin skin. With different thickness and density of the material, the seam can lead away. For coarse and thick material, you definitely need to use only special needles for the skin.
It is best to have professional sewing equipment for such cases. But if only a household sewing machine is at hand, how to sew leather in this case?
What to sew?
In order not to spoil the material, it is better to immediately get a special needle for the skin. Its sharpening and the shape of the tip make it easy to pierce even very coarse material. Depending on the needle, pick up threads for machine sewing. They must be strong and flexible. There is no sense in using ordinary twisted threads for handmade in a sewing machine, they will not work.
How to flash skin at home without professional equipment? For serious work, it is better to replace the usual presser foot with a special one with Teflon coating, designed to work with the skin. It should be protected from idle sewing without material, since the lower teeth of the feed mechanism can scratch a smooth surface.
An even better option is to purchase a professional version of the foot with a roller. Such a clamp does not inhibit the skin during feeding, but rather promotes it, working as an additional upper conveyor. Not all paws are suitable for any machine, so you should pay attention to the mechanism of its attachment to the rod.
Secrets of Mastery
Using an electric household appliance without experience, you should sew the skin with extreme caution, you can not only break the needle, but also disable the mechanism. If there is a choice, then for these purposes it is better to use old and proven equipment with manual transmission.
The maximum possible skin thickness is up to 1.5 mm. Soft skin up to 1 mm can be stitched with a regular needle No. 80–90. If there are gaps in the seam, or the foot rises when the needle is removed, it is better not to waste time and energy, but to look for special needles for the skin.
It is better to set the stitch length above average, as frequent punctures weaken the material. Tough skin will be easier to sew if it is slightly moistened. Thick places are beaten with a hammer until smooth.
It is not worthwhile to fasten the seam with the reverse stroke of the machine, it will not hold. It is better to tie the ends of the threads manually and singe them with fire. The seam allowances on the reverse side are leveled, hammered and glued.
Classification of sewing needles
There are two numbering systems (sizes): European and American. To facilitate perception, manufacturers mark the numbers of sewing needles in two versions at once through the fraction sign (60/8). According to the European system, in the range of 60–120, according to the American system - 8–21. The smaller the value, the smaller the diameter of the needle. Number 60 corresponds to a thickness of 0.6 mm, and 100, respectively - 1 mm.
With the same marking, sewing needles for leather from different manufacturers may differ externally. They are marked with the letters LT and can also be used when sewing fabrics with varnish. For this material, manufacturers produce needles with numbers in the range of 90/14 - 110/18.
Despite the fact that working with leather requires knowledge of many technological features of the sewing process and is considered a rather difficult task, with due care and patience, experience will appear over time and everything will turn out!