Have you ever paid a hefty amount of money for a most uncomplicated leather article such as a handbag and though that you would have created on your own. Then suddenly, a thought came to your mind that you do not own a professional sewing leather machine.
Whenever you tried to creative with leather material, you always asked, can you sew leather with a regular sewing machine? Well, surprisingly, the answer is yes! You can use a regular machine to sew leather.
The good news is that any regular home sewing machine would be capable enough to handle leather. For that purpose, you need to make a few simple adjustments to get your machine ready for some exciting leather sewing projects.
To give you some handy tips and hacks, we have created this blog so that you all can learn how to sew leather on a regular sewing machine!
Tips and Techniques on How To Sew Leather at Home
If you are a newbie then we recommend that you should choose natural leather over synthetic ones. Comparatively, natural leather is thin than synthetic, and such genuine leathers are much more natural to handle.
Moreover, artificial leathers are thicker and require much more effort of your machine to sew them; thus, we recommend it to use as you develop familiarity.
After selecting leather of your choice, there are some tips and techniques that you need to consider to ensure you successfully sew leather on your sewing machine at home.
1. Adjust the Presser Tool of Your Regular Machine
A standard presser foot, which we generally use for thin clothes, will stick to leather and will prevent your leather from feeding correctly throughout the machine.
The adjustment you can do to fix this issue is to change the foot of the machine to a roller foot or a Teflon foot, both of them works amazing over leather. Or you can also use the walking foot. Try each of them and find out which one works better for you.
Teflon Foot
Teflon foot is also called a “non-stick foot” or an “ultra-glide foot.” It generally has a white appearance and which constructs of Teflon, and it allows the leather of any kind such as faux leather, PVC, and similar textiles to glide from side to side without sticking to the foot.
Roller Foot
The roller foot usually has three sized rollers, one larger one at the forward-facing and two smaller ones towards the back, each of which helps to control the movement of the leather and guide it under the foot as you sew leather.
Walking Foot
Walking foot is sometimes called an “even-feed” foot. Usually, this one has the feed dogs that work in combination with the machine’s feed dogs to grip the leather from both the top and bottom and feed it through the machine evenly as you sew.
2. Change the Needle
It is necessary to change your needle from the normal one to the heavy-duty needle that is perfect to sew thick materials like leather.
Such dense a d sharp needles have a different type of tip, which makes the piercing easier in the leather. Moreover, such tips break very often, thus make sure to keep some extras for that time.
3. Adjust with Broadened Stitch Length
Use a longer than usual stitch when sewing leather; we recommend using for about a 3.5- 4, which is the longest stitch available with home machines.
You can use any type of stitch length in the full range of longer than a regular stitch but shorter than a basting stitch. Shorter stitches can puncture the leather causing it to tear.
4. Use the Best Thread Available
Since you are dealing with the different types of fabric, which is leather, thus do not use ordinary cotton thread for the reason that tannins in the leather will erode the thread, and it will open eventually. In its place, use polyester or nylon strings.
You may want to use heavy-duty topstitching thread; it is not compulsory, but leather does look nice when stitched with more massive thread; it gives more of ta rough and tough look.
5. Tape it, Do Not Pin It
It would help if you never used pins in leather, as they will make a permanent hole in your fabric. As an alternative, hold pieces of leather together before sewing and secure by taping them along with the double-sided tape, which comes in the dispenser and is easy to use.
Just apply a streak of tape amid the two pieces of leather you need to sew, put the tape lengthwise the edge of your leather, inside what will be the seam allowance.
Then and there sew your seam. The tape will remain inside so there is no need to remove the tape after stitching.
6. Test Before Stitching
Sewing leather could sometimes get demanding; any stitches you sew will leave a lasting mark that cannot fix very quickly as it is with other types of fabric.
For this purpose, we always recommend that you use a scrap leather to test your thread, stitch length, tension, needle, and the other general performance of your machine to clear that you are on the right path before starting your actual leather sewing projects.
7. Plan Well
As you know, your home machine will not perform quite very well with the multi-layered leather; thus, we always recommend that you use simple leather sewing projects.
In this blog, you will learn how to sew thin leather, what size needle to sew leather, how to sew leather, how to stitch two pieces of leather together.
Conclusion
Well if you have appropriately learned, and got all your tools intact, you do not require to go to store frequently to buy resources, you have a training guide with you to help create any pattern you like. This will also help you create better designs with fewer hassles.