Christmas Gifts: The Leather Stuff

 I hope you all had a lovely Christmas! I did, and I managed to finish the gifts for my daughters just in time, and found something to buy for my husband that I knew he would love. I don't have photos of the gifts I made for the daughters yet, but since the gifts for my family arrived (only 2 days late! I'm improving here...) I thought I'd show you what they were. First up are the things I made from leather. (I bought the leather here, and was really impressed with the quality)

  For my mother, a leather leaf bowl:

  This one is much larger than the first one I made, and came out SO much better! I had a little bit of a hard time parting with it. =) I hot glued the darts together before stitching this time... by the way, I really hate hot gluing things. It sticks in all the wrong spots, won't stick where you want it to, burns your fingers, and gets messy glue strings everywhere. It did work decently for this though, and held the darts long enough that it wasn't ridiculously difficult trying to sew them this time. My machine went through the one layer of leather beautifully for this.

  See, the back is much prettier this time too:

  And it is big enough to actually use, as a candy dish or probably a good many other things:

  The next thing I made was a little leather box for one of my brothers:

  This was the most difficult thing I made this year... my machine went through one layer of leather beautifully, but two was just too much. I finished it by using the hand-wheel to push the needle through, although looking back that probably put a lot of strain on my machine, and I really should have hand-sewed it. The initial on top is sewn through one layer of leather, then glued onto the lid.

  I am really happy with how it turned out, even if it was far more difficult than I had anticipated.

  As part of the gift for my youngest sister, I put together a leather headband:

  This one is glued together, but NOT with hot glue. I didn't feel like hot glue would hold together well enough on a headband, so I used E-6000 glue and clipped it strategically overnight so it would stay together until it dried. I don't think it's coming apart anytime soon. =)

  Here is Booper modeling it for the photos:

  This headband was inspired by Disney's Lauren headbands, although my leather was too thick for a sweet layered bow like she did. I still love it. =)

  I may have to make another one for my little person:

  I also made two belts.... these were kind of a last minute thing. I was in the middle of making leather wallets with some thinner leather I bought, but they flopped terribly, partly because the piece of leather I was working with was just too small. So I went for belts!

  I did a line of stitching all the way around the belt, just after cutting it out and before doing anything else. Then I punched the holes and attached the buckles. I really wanted a more unique buckle, but I couldn't find anything I loved in the time constraints I was in. In fact, it was either the buckle I used, a much smaller square one, or a really ugly western-styled one. I'm pleased with how the belts turned out anyway.

  I did a little inscribing on the leather, next to the buckle where it would be hidden most of the time.

  I used a (super-cheapo) wood-burning tool to do it. The belts are different sizes and I didn't want them getting mixed up, since they otherwise look identical.

  Besides, I like the personalized touch. =)

And there you have it, the leather gifts I made this year! Although actually there is one little leather gift that I'll show you when I share the rest of the gifts I made.

Thanks for stopping by!