Bag Making Online Sling: What's in the tool kit?
Students of Bag Making Online: Sling should have basic leather crafting materials as well as prior experience in the craft. For beginners, we suggest the Basic Leather Crafting Workshop Online as a start.
The basic fee for the class covers all materials necessary to create a tote bag:
1 - Pull-up, pull-side, or crazy horse leather (40 x 62 cm) - soft top-grain leather. It is characteristic of this leather to change in color at the folds, creating a distressed effect over time. Pull-up has more of a matte finish, while pull-side has a sheen to it. Students will receive any of the three types, depending on availability.
2 - Veg-tanned straps (125 x 2.5 cm) - Veg-tanned leather usually comes thick, dense and firm, making it a great material for straps.
3 - Awl - a pointed marking tool that is very useful in both pattern making and bag construction.
4 - Silver pen - a pen with ink that can be erased on most leather surfaces; used for marking leather.
5 - 1mm hollow punch - a tool that is used to punch out holes for stitching.
6 - Tapestry needles (size 24; 2 pcs) - blunt needles used for saddle stitching
7 - Waxed thread - durable thread that is used for leather craft
8 - Contact cement in squeeze bottle - adhesive for leather
9 - Rivets (8 x 6 mm; and 8 x 8 mm) - hardware used to fasten leather pieces together permanently
10 - Adjuster (2.5 cm) - hardware that slides along the strap to adjust length
11 - Square rings (2.5 cm; 2 pcs.) - hardware that attaches the strap to the body of the sling bag
12 - Magnetic lock (18 mm) - used as a closure for the bag
13 - A4 kraft paper - used for pattern making exercise
14 - Large kraft paper - used for pattern making
ADD-ONS:
Add-ons are optional tools for the class that can make the process easier or faster for you.
Stitching Pony - a stitching pony holds your leather as you saddle stitch. You may purchase this later after the class from the Smithy.
A2 Cutting Mat and 60cm ruler - the BLC kit comes with a smaller set (A4 cutting mat and 30cm ruler), which is fine for smaller projects. But it could be difficult to work on a bigger piece of leather with the same small tools. An upgrade to an A2 cutting mat and a longer ruler can make the flow of the bag making process a lot smoother.
Multi-prong punchers - instead of punching stitching holes one by one, multi-prong punchers (as the name suggests) efficiently punch multiple holes at a time.