Leather Pen Wrap
At the beginning of this month, Michael (my63) sent me a wonderful pen storage box that he had modified for me from an art supply box. Some details about that box can be found in this thread: Boxes repurposed for pen storage Along with the box he sent me a nice piece of brown leather; he said he had planned to make me a pen wrap as a surprise, but ran out of time, so sent me the leather anyway, thinking I might enjoy making one for myself. This seemed like a great idea, so I started gathering some materials for it, cut out the leather, and then hesitated for a bit, intimidated by the thought of sewing the leather. Sewing - as you will see from the photos - is not my forte and not something I am at all good at.
The weekend before last I finally decided it was time and got to it. I found that I did in fact enjoy the work and I actually had fun, even with the sewing. I can barely sew on a button, but found making something simple out of leather, even though it involves sewing, was not painful or frustrating at all.
Here is a walk through in photos of my project:
First the leather - nice thick brown leather from Michael and rust/burnt orange colored pigskin suede from my local Tandy Leather shop. The brown leather is for the exterior, protective cover and the suede is for the interior pen slots.
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Tools used - two stitching needles with waxed thread for the saddle stitching I used throughout the project, plus a hole punch to make the holes in the leather so that it could be stitched. I used a plastic headed mallet with the diamond hole punch to make the holes. After my first row of holes was done and sewed, I decided I had been a bit too tentative with the use of the punch, so used the punch (or should I say the mallet...) more aggressively with the next rows and found that the holes were cleaner and the sewing was much easier.
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I used an awl and a paint stir stick to make the lines in the leather so that I could have a guide line for the hole punch; somehow my lines did not end up as parallel as I had planned and the stitching is crooked, but other than that it worked pretty well.
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While I was designing the pen wrap, I had originally planned to make the slots about 5 inches deep, but I discovered that the clips on my pens did not slide easily over the suede - it was too thick or maybe the fibers were too "catchy" - so I shortened the slots so that the pens would slide into the slot and leave enough of their caps exposed so that the pens could be easily grasped and pulled from their slots.
Here is a photo of the interior pen slot piece, all slots sewn and top flap closed:
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Photo of my Lamy 2000 in one of the slots:
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I decided to sew the interior pen slot piece to the exterior leather instead of gluing it; it seemed to me that this would make it more secure as well as allowing "wiggle" room for the pens in the slots, if you know what I mean. I sewed it to the exterior piece of leather with two rows of saddle stitching; it looked nice, to me, and also added a nice pattern to the exterior of the pen wrap.
One row sewed, the other "hole punched" and ready for sewing:
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Sewing completed, and my sewing "ability" on display:
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Exterior of pen wrap showing the thread rows from attaching the interior suede piece; I like the contrast:
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FP Geeks will not allow me to attach any more photos in one post so I will continue this in the next post.
Holly
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Originally Posted by Nomdeplume
Thank you for the pen nib source - I ordered a pkg and will use one on my Traveler's Style notebook.
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