Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hi, my name's outgas. I'm a Dutch designer and maker with a great passion for beautiful handmade products, especially if you can make them all by yourself at home. In this course, I'll show you how to create a design for your own letter wallet. How to design a pattern, and how to make it using a simple stitching method. You're creating and small pocket wallet and it will fit all your most common bank cards. I have chosen not to use professional letter tools. So you can make it with ordinary tools. I'm sure you already have at home. If you do have special tools, you can of course, use them to make the world even more beautiful. This course is procreative makers who want to learn more about letter crafting and stitching. You don't need any experience. I explain everything step-by-step. Once you understand how to make your own letter products, this is very addictive because you will find out that it's a lot of fun and you will come up with all kinds of new ideas. It satisfies who make things yourself. And I hope you will learn a lot from this class. Well, let's get started with the first lesson.
2. What you need: What you need. As I already mentioned, I used as many ordinary tools as possible. So you don't have to buy special letter Crafting tools. What do you need, at least as strong threat? Firmly wax tribe, about 0.3. too, one millimeter. A fork, scissors, glue, hammer, a nail of about two millimeters. A piece of wooed, a pencil, a sharp knife, a ruler, a bank art, some water, sanding paper, a piece of leather. And too thick needles. I wouldn't be great to have our bees wax. A clamp, a large knife appear, sir. A drill with a two millimeter drill bit and a burnish here. Alright, let's go to the next step and make a design of your wallet.
3. Design: Design. In this course, I'll teach you how to make this beautiful book a toilet. It's a small handy pocket wallet and you can easily take with you, and it fits all your bank arch. It's made of thick vegetable tanned leather. That only becomes more beautiful than the more you use it. The wallet has a slot at the bottom, so you can use your thumb to produce up to bank carts. So they jump right up when you rent a checkout in a supermarket. And his first step, we're going to make a design. There are a lot of options, but you know, to best what works for you. And if something works well, you will enjoy it the most, and it will alas, the longest. We start with making some simple sketches. You can think of different things. First of all, what's shaped? A hole at the bottom should have round, square or triangle. Or you can add more slots to create an extra comportment for your stationary or business cards. Evil with such a small wall of, there are still many choices you can make. Some ideas you can think of are you can make it out of two pieces. So without followed lines, you get to see more stitches. Foldleft is makes it more playful and unique and easier to make. Folded down. A minimalistic and easy to make design. Flap is will ensure that the cars can never fall out. With an extra panel. More space for your cash or paper money. Or you can make it in the landscape with multiple compartments. Each card isn't as separate slumped and you don't have make a hole at the bottom. And of course many more. Try to sketch out your ideas and think about which parts you need to make. Where are the stitches and how are you going to connect to different parts? Can you also folds farts? And how do you want to do that? Play a little with some ideas and choose a design you want to create. In the next step, you've got to transform that into a pattern.
4. Pattern: Better. When you've made a sketch and choosing the design, we make a pattern to scale. We do this by first measuring the size of the parts that go into the wallet. In my case, to bank arts, and take a piece of paper and draw the shape. It's best to use slightly thicker paper. If you have that and you've got a better feel of your design, you have to create some extra space for the stitches around yet shifts depending on your design. I've added about seven millimeters extra on both sides, about three millimeters to where to stitch just come. And around three millimeters to the edge of the wallet. And plus one millimeter extra. And that kind of cut off later to clean the edges. At the place where you're going to fold the letter. There are no stitches needed, but I also add seven millimeters in total because the folded letter will also take up space. You can also calculate is very simply the bank cart is 54 millimeters by 85 millimeters. So to total width then becomes 85 plus seven plus seven is 68 millimeters. For the length. You do this twice. So it's 85 plus five plus seven is 177 millimeters. So we're going to make a pattern of 68 millimeters by 177 millimeters. Draw these measurements on a sheet of paper with a ruler and makes sure is exactly square. I use my bank card for that. Could out your pattern and folded in half. See if the measurements are correct. Sometimes you need a little more length because of the amount of bank carts or because of your own personal taste. When you're sure you're patterns, right, you draw the shape on the letter. Or if you want to make this more often, you can also decide to make a mold. So you can cut this pattern quickly and easy. The next time. You can do it is with a thick piece of cardboard. For example. I use a vegetable tanned leather myself. This is thick and I can shape it afterwards by making it a width with water. I like it very much because it has a natural way of discoloration and it becomes more and more beautiful. Well you'll use it. So I don't died or oil in a factory, the natural oils on your hands will pull in a leather layer by layer, making it darker and darker. Also to sunlight makes a leather darker. Here's an example of a wallet I made five years ago and is made of exactly the same letter. Later in the course. I'll tell you how to speed up the process if he wanted to get a dagger right away with natural oils like olive oil. Now, you can also recycle letter, of course, from an old so far or couch, they often have thicker letter. There are many different kinds of letter, but it's important to use a nice thick piece of leather of at least two to three millimeters thick. Dry your pattern on the leather and look for a nice clean peace without damage and without too much cutting loss. Carefully cut, align around your pattern, but a sharp knife or needle. You will see that this is immediately visible on the leather. You can see that the letter is very sensitive and they're strive to remain on the letter. So be careful. You can cut these with a sharp knife and a ruler. Make sure you cut straight by holding the knife vertical. To get the best result. It doesn't matter if you have to go back and forth a few times as long as she keep your knife straight and for to go. If you press too hard, you risk damaging your leather or hurting yourself. If you have a coroner or rounding in your design, it is best to first cut the pieces trait. And after that, good up to corner layer by layer with a sharp knife. Cut all the pieces out of the leather and try to work as precise as possible. Now you have to base off your wallet. Let's go to the next step.
5. Guiding & Stitching holes: Guiding and stitching holes. Once you have cut out all the parts, you can put them on top of each other in the right order and see if they fit properly. It doesn't matter if they don't fit perfectly because he couldn't come them clean later after we have made the holes. And you can make small corrections with sanding paper. Before we start, we're going to send older parse for the first time. Would find sending paper. Put them on the table, try to keep departs as vertical as possible. You can also use a wooden plank. You will notice that layers of the lead our quickly disappear. So be careful not to change the shape of your design. Sand until it feels flat and smooth. And a little fibers on the edges need to be gone for the best result. To get the holes neat and organized, you need to draw a line when an offset of about three to four millimeters. Because in my case we're going to fold the letter. There should be no line at the bottom. So find a middle of the leather and makes sure there's no guiding line visible there. So make a guiding line on the size of the stitches needs to go. You can do it is with an adjustable stitching Grover. But we are just going to use a ruler with a needle or a knife. You will have to work a bit more precise. It does work just fine. Then we're going to figure out where to holes need to come. Normally use a puncher or diamond chisel to do that. But we are just going to use a normal fork and then make the holes with a nail and hit them with a hammer. Or you can make holes with a drill. If you have a revolver puncher and is often used to make holes in a belt. You can also use that. In my experience, making a hole in the letter is better than making a cut. Because I've cut can tear out, start into corner and gently press which your fork into the letter, following the guiding line you've created. Then you start again at the last dot and go on till u for each descender of your news. And this is where you stop. Then do the same thing again, starting from the opposite side. Duties on all sides where stitches need to go. Make sure you have the same number of knots on both sides. You now see exactly where to host must come. And the distance between the holes is exactly the same. Try to work as precise as possible to make sure to holes are aligned. Then take a nail of about two to three millimeters thick and place it above the first hole. Firmly with the hammer in the leather. Using a wooden board are playing below the letter. These allows you to head to Neil a little further and creates a nice hole. You can also use a drill with a two millimeter drill bit. Can drill, makes a hole in a letter like a punch or does. Then you use a peer, sir, a needle or a Neil to clean up the holes and opened him up? I don't you've made all the holes in a letter. You can fold it and see if all the holes match. I piercing the first hole with a peer share. And in the last one, you can align the holes. Death we will polish and burn all parts again. You can use a little be swags for this and you can buy at a local pharmacy. The bee's wax burns a bit in the letter when it heats up by polishing the letter. We also call this burning the letter. The inside of the letter is often very rough. And you can also make this a little more smooth with bees wax and a piece of wood. Don't use sanding. Pay for this. I use a little wooden plank, which works great. You will see that the edges of the letter become a bit smoother and they're loose fibers will disappear. It's best to glue the two parts before we start stitching. You have special letter glue for this that is invisible and leather. But if you're careful, you can also use transparency, textile glue, spread igloo around asides, and glue to parts together. Now it's very important that all the holes are aligned and exactly on top of each other. So use your peer sir are a needle again to align all the holes. This is very important. You can slide letter a bit when the glue is still wet. Remove any remaining glue onto the sides so it doesn't get on the front side of the wallet. If there is a lot of roughness on the edge, you can cut off a small strip to make the etches perfectly straight. Don't cut more than one millimeter and make sure both sides remained as saying, You Shu ruler and a sharp knife. And keep it straight and vertical. Now let it dry for awhile and we are ready for the next step. The most fun step, stitching.
6. Handstitching: Hence stitching. We're going to attach the elements of the wallet together with stitches. We used a well-known settle stage for this. This will give you a nice finish on both sides of the wallet. It may be an idea to practice first so that your final product doesn't get damaged. You can just take a piece of leftover leather and make ten to 15 holes for practice. Most Letter workers uses stitch pony. This is actually a wooden clan between which you can clamp your project so you have both hands free. You can also use a simple workbench clamp like this one. Makes sure there is nothing sharp or hard between the clamp and the letter. To prevent scratches. You can put a piece of letter or felt between the clamp. If you don't have a clamp, you can also just continue by hand. Are used to thick books to hold the wallet. I use pretty thick walks threat because I like to show to stitches. But you can also use thinner 0.3. or 0.5. millimeters threat. One way to calculate the required length of threat is to make the beginning of your thread and repeat five times the total distance you are going to stitch. Like this. If you do a lot of layers on top of each other, like a design with extra pockets. It's best to do it as times six, just to be sure. Cut the thread. And before I start, I add some extra bee's wax to make it easier to get through the eye of the needle and make it easier to stitch. With his saddle stitch method. You need to needles. It's best to use a thick needle because they are easier to pull out when making a stitch. Place a threat in the eye of the needle. And now there is a trick to make sure it doesn't slip out while stitching. First, you pulled a thread through the eye of the needle and leave about an inch or so. Then you split the threat and half would a tip off your Nieto sort of needle goes through. Then you push the thread back towards the eye of the needle and pull it over the end. Like this. You do it is with both needles. I show you one more time. So first pull the thread truly I and leave about an inch. Then split the threat and half would to take off your needle and then push it back to the eye of the needle and pull it over the end. Now we can start stitching. Start on the bottom and pull one of the Neil's sort of first hole. Then see if both sides have the same length. So you know, you're in the center. Now you put one of the needles back and when it's all the way through, you pull it down. Now take the older needle again and put it back. At the same time. Hold the ulnar thread down tight and a little bit forward so you don't accidentally pierced the threat. When you make the stitch. Again, the needle goes through. Then you pull the thread tied and keep it low. And you bring the other needle back through the same hole and keep it tied again. You do this until you've reached the end. Make sure you tighten your threat during stitching. The letter is strong enough, so it's best to put a little force. So now the threat will pull itself a little into the letter. When you've reached the end, you can finish it. You can do this in different ways. I like a small detail that shows that it is handmade by making a square out of it. It also protects the corner of the wallet. You do it is by stitching one times forward and go back to the same hole. And after that one time sideways and go back to the same hole. You go back one stitch for ending. You will notice that it gets heavier. V goes there and now several threads going through the same hole. When you're finished, you pulled a thread tied again and cut it off. All right, well done. You haven't done the first row and you see the result immediately. The stitch is very clean and strong to make the threat even more one with a letter, you can gently hit it with a hammer. You will see that it gets more flat and it makes a threat sit better. Now the other side goes exactly the same way. You start again at the bottom. Work your way back to the top of the wallet. Take your time. Is better to take it easy then to take the wire out completely because you've made a mistake. When you are finished, I show you how you can make your wallet even more beautiful. Finish it.
7. Burnishing & Finishing: Burnishing and finishing. Okay, we've arrived at the final step, would very important stuff. First of all, we need a hole at the bottom of the wallet so you can push the bank cards up. So these can be different shapes. I've chosen around and looked for a round shape that can use as a guide. This is a small gap of a glue stick, for example, you can use. Determined is sender with a ruler and push to shape into the letter or draw a line with a pencil. Around shape is difficult to cut out properly. And this is why many a letter artists use a corner punch. But if you're a patient and careful, you can also use a sharp knife and cut out the rounding layer by layer. The best way to start is with a bigger knife like this, so that you know for sure that it goes through both layers and the bottom is not crooked. And we can start with trading the edges won last time. We used a bee's wax again and rub it on the sides. Then we take a piece of food or if you have one and burn Usher. With this, we can burn yet just and a bee's wax, we'll pull in the letter and protects the edges. Rep quickly with your wooed along the edges. So it heats up. You can see that the edges are getting smoother and more beautiful. The two half's melt together and the edges become a lot more solid. When you're done, we'll see if the band guards fit into bullet. You will see that you will have a hard time getting them into the wallet. That's why are we going to solve the letter with water? If letter gets wet, you can deform it just like clay. Take a bowl with water and gently rub the water evenly over the letter. You will see that it gets a little darker. If you put the bank ours n Now, you can bend the wallet to shape your like. You have to put some fours in it and make sure it stays symmetrical. Now you'll let the wallet dry for awhile with the bank cards in it. When it's dry and a walled will keep its shape. As I told you before, vegetable tent letter has a light color and gets darker and darker because of his son, but especially because you are touching it constantly. The oils in your hands are pulling layer by layer into the letter, making it darker and darker. For example, if I hold it in my hands for a moment and rub it with my fingers, it gets a little darker already. Now you can speed up this process naturally with oil. I use a little olive oil, spread the oil evenly over the leather and you will see the immediate result. It has become a love darker. It becomes lighter again when it's absorbed. When it's absorbed, you can add a second layer till you have reached the color you like. So this is an old bullets from five years ago made from the same letter. I like it the most when you're leaded color naturally, it will see that it gets more beautiful every day you use it. Okay, well done. We're at the end of this course. I really hope you've learned something about letter crafting and how to work step-by-step to design and create your own wallet. I'm very curious about your final results. So I would love it if you could share it into Commons or if you have any questions or ideas, let me know. Thank you and see you soon.
Auke & Jildou, Designer & Maker Architecture & Interior
