Not Brown or Black....

Look what's hanging over my bannister - gently stretching and gravity doing her work easing out crinkles and folds.

It's not black or brown or grey, not red (Tia) or pink but stone! Yeah, yeah, I know... but I got a full Italian leather hide for way less than half price on ebay. How could I resist? You're all on my side on this aren't you?

I'm not too sure what the "Italian" means, presumably from Italy - does that make it good? I don't know. I'm trying to learn all about leather. There are some holes in the hide but that's natural and work-aroundable. It is a little thicker than I have been reading about. This is 1.1mm thick while all the books say 0.6-0.9mm is best but I figured what's 0.2mm between seams? That's so small a measurement that inches don't go down that far! This one piece is 48sq feet - absolutely massive.

Teenage son was appalled - he even asked if it was legal and tried to figure out the ass end from the head end! God bless his innocent little heart.

Comision-free, let me direct you to Leather Hides. UK based and Anthony provided the best response, personal attention and fastest delivery known to man. Thank you Antony.

It does cry out 'jacket' please, but I'm sticking my guns on this and I'll use this as a genuine 'muslin' for the black or brown or grey or red leather pants (the leather which will be purchased from Antony). I should have some left over and am thinking of bag or waistcoat (vest). but let's just get the main attraction done first though.

While the pleather pants were a good test of one-chance sewing, this will really tax the technical sewing side.

Some thought is needed before sewing this beast into a tamed pair of pants.
Some courage is also needed before attacking with scissors.

There is the most wonderful smell of leather wafting though our house this evening.

Jeans

There hasn't been too much happening in the sewing room this week, so I thought I'd show you some of the jeans I've been cranking out over the summer and never really blogged about and present you with a dilemma over my proposed leather trousers/pants. Read on

I took Kenneth D King's Jeanius online course earlier this year; I managed to snag it at a bargain price. You can buy access from all sorts of sites, I got mine via Craftsy.

It is a rub off method for copying your favourite pair of RTW jeans. The process of actually getting the pattern, while involved, taught me lots about pattern drafting and I even bought new tools and gadgets to make the job easier. Once the pattern is drafted it is ready to use. I have made four pairs of jeans from the one pattern - each pair a little different from the last but the fit is getting better and better every time. It is interesting to see how different fabrics, especially those with a bit stretch, sew up differently from each other so there's always a bit of tweaking involved somewhere along the line.

I can sew the crotch area without worry. I've almost mastered the fly zip. Topstitching is still a bit wobbly and back pocket placement is somewhat random..... but I'm getting there.

No. 1
A very non-stretch creamy moleskin type of fabric. Lots of faults but making these highlighted what areas need to be adjusted.

No. 2 Grey denim with a slight stretch. I wear this pair A LOT. Here they are hanging on the washing line alongside teenage son's.

No. 3 The fabric is the unbleached cotton twill from Raystitch purchased ages ago and I finally got round to putting it to good use. The jeans are a little 'heavy' - good for autumn/winter wearing though. When I'm not in the grey jeans I'm in these.

No 4 Finally and most recently the pleather pair. With these I straightened the legs and are my muslin for the real leather pair that I shall make one day when the world is perfect.

I've done a bit of serious research about leather this week and have found out this -
Garment weight leather comes in thicknesses of 0.6-0.9mm. Any thinner and it may tear, heavier thicknesses ( 1.2 - 1.5 cm) are used for biker jackets and really thick hides are used for shoes.

Leather is sold in hides by the square foot. There is a fairly simple calculation to convert yards/metres to sq ft. which means you can in theory make any pattern in leather. This is taken from Vogue Sewing Book, page 359 - the answer to my query was on my bookshelves all along! There are 13 sq ft to one yard of 150cm wide fabric. I need 1.8m or 2 metres to make life easy of fabric for these jeans

Metres = 2
multiply by 13 = 26

Multiply 26 by 0.15 for piecing allowance = 3.9. Even go to 0.2 to be on the safe side

26 + 3.9 = 29.9

So I need to acquire 30 sq ft of leather at 0.6- - 0.9mm thick for a pair of leather jeans.

Seems simple enough and so I went trawling the net for UK suppliers of leather hides almost ready to buy a traditional black or dark brown and this is when the next dilemma occurred. There is just too much choice! All the colours of the rainbow; pigskin, goatskin, calfskin, cowskin; leather, nappa, suede; smooth finish, mottled finish, embossed finished, metallic, patent and on and on.

So opinions please.... plain black or brown or a colour?

I'll get more wear from a neutral colour but I am tempted.....

Thanks to all of you who offered advice, hints and showcased your own leather sewing projects in the last post. As always, I appreciate your expertise and encouragement.

I've also just noticed, when the photos of jeans construction are placed in chronological order my hair gets shorter and shorter!