AROUND HOME : Leather Craft

THE VERY WORDS leather craft conjure visions of summer-camp crafts classes filled with tense youngsters doggedly braiding rawhide key chains that their parents would use for a week and then retire to a drawer. Sometimes the kids make stamped-leather belts, which is a bit more fun. But nobody wears those for very long either.

Leather goods, more than any other article of clothing (except perhaps hats), have been gradually removed from home manufacture. We don’t hesitate to make our own curtains, even rugs, but shoes? No way. And even if we did, we probably wouldn’t wear them outside the house. I’m convinced that home-crafted leather goods look so relentlessly homely not because they are inherently difficult to make but because there is a scarcity of good, fashionable patterns. Book after book carefully demonstrates how to make ugly belts, handbags you wouldn’t carry to a dog fight, sandals from the ‘60s and leather jerkins that no one has worn since the Revolutionary War. Where can we learn how to make (or even approximate) Fendi bags, Ferragamo shoes, Armani jackets?

First things first: Beginners must learn how to choose the right leather for a project--a bewildering task of sorting through various sizes, grades, thicknesses and kinds of leather, not to mention colors. Leather, unlike fabric, is not always available in large quantities, and if several pieces are needed for a garment, matching hide to hide is extremely important. Then the beginner faces an array of tools, some familiar (scissors), some not (cobbler’s and bevel-point knives, bezel shears and assorted hole punchers, groovers, edgers, awls, even mallets and mauls). Not all projects require the use of all those tools, of course; a belt needs only a cutting tool, a punch for the holes or eyelets and some hardware for the buckle. A simple straight skirt of suede or soft leather shouldn’t require anything more than scissors and a sewing machine.

Tooled leather is simply leather that has been stamped, scored, painted, dyed, textured--any number of techniques that can transform a plain piece of animal hide into an artist’s canvas.

Tandy Leather Co. stores in Southern California sell leather, books, patterns (for wallets, purses, belts and so forth), and more than 300 stamping tools. A basic leather-craft kit costs $29.95; a deluxe leather-craft kit is $69.95. A kit for children between the ages of 9 and 12 is offered for $14.95. Classes are offered in leather tooling and techniques; some stores offer garment-making classes. George Mooers, manager of the Costa Mesa Tandy Leather Co. store, recently finished tooling a winged dragon on his attache case: “Anything you can put on paper you can put on leather,” he says.

“The Leathercraft Book,” by Pat Hills, published by Random House (1973) is one of very few leather-instruction books with good designs, especially for belts, but it is out of print and will take some searching in libraries and used-book stores to find.