- People have been making clothes out of leather since the caveman.

An alternative to all the fabrics we've discussed is the contemporary use of leather.

How do we go from yardage to skins?

Does leather have a grain?

How many skins do I need?

And how do I care for leather?

Can I use my regular sewing machine?

These questions answered and so much more, plus, we'll visit a finishing house where designers can add special and even custom made finishing touches to their leather creations.

All today, on Fit 2 Stitch.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Fit 2 Stitch is made possible by Britex Fabrics.

(piano music) Vogue Fabrics, Evanston, Illinois.

(piano music) Bennos Buttons.

(piano music) Kai Scissors.

(piano music) Sew Steady.

(piano music) O. C. Sewing, Buena Park, Fullerton, Garden Grove and Irvine, California.

(piano music) Richland Sewing Center, Dallas Texas and the Metroplex.

(piano music) Cynthia's Fine Fabrics.

(piano music) And Mike Gunther Industries.

- One of my favorite things to do is to find little out of the way fabrication industries.

Today you get to go with me.

Let's go explore.

This is one of those great little places that you would never find just driving down a road.

One of the things I learned in design school is when you're trying to create a garment and really trying to make it unique and different, you want to look at what you can do to make it a little bit better.

What you can add on, what you can finish it with.

And let others help you.

Think of what else can somebody do, a little bit better than what I can do myself, and that's what really lead me years ago to Luis, because I had a dress line, and I was struggling with how to create it, make it better, greater, etc., and he was really able to make my garments, just take 'em up a whole 'nother level.

And so I want to talk to him a little bit today about what he does.

How long have you been doing this?

- I've been doing this for 47 years.

- He started very young.

But this is his own company.

And how'd you get into it?

- Well, a worked for a company for 25 years and I decide to go on my own, and test my abilities.

- So that all American dream while working for somebody else, we want to just decide, we decide we can do it on our own and off you go.

- Exactly the way I did it.

- So let's just talk about some of the products you do.

- Okay, this is for the schools.

They just send me-- - So the drill team?

- The drill teams, they just send me the sizes and what they want and I produce it over here.

- All right you guys, here we go.

We're out on the field.

And yet if you notice, this one must be the queen.

- Right.

- This must be the leader.

And then these are the other people who follow behind.

But this is leather.

The grommets are put in.

The ties, these are a lot of work.

- Yes it is.

It's a lot of hand work.

- [Peggy] It's a lot of hand work.

- It's just whatever the customer wants, we can produce over here.

- That's his attitude.

His attitude is really, if you guys want it done, we'll figure it out.

- Right.

- We've got a machine to do it and we'll take care of it for you.

And that's the key.

Through the years, Lewis has collected a lot of specialized industrial machines, that it simply would not be practical to have at home.

This is a commercial surging machine.

And it moves five to 10 times faster than our home models.

This is a shearing machine.

Notice it's only using five needles, one needle per row, but it can use up to 27.

As we all know, this would take much longer at home.

What's this machine here?

- That one is to put the rivets, the eyelets.

This machine does a lot of stuff.

You can put on snaps, you can put eyelets.

This machine is probably from the late 30s, or early 40s.

- It still works.

- It still works like when it was new.

To replace this one with a new version, you're going to spend $10,000.

- Wow, okay.

We really appreciate you being here.

- Okay.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

- Here we are at another one of my favorite places.

This belongs to Paulette, she's been a designer for many years, and there are some great things to see.

Come on, let's go look.

The boxes on this wall contain hundreds and hundreds of buttons, wooden, plastic, fabric, hand made, imported, and in every shape and color you can imagine.

It's important to find just the right one.

Good design is in the details.

And look at this thread wall.

Beautiful, can you imagine having this many choices?

Ah, there's that perfect button.

Paulette works in all kinds of fabrics, but one of her specialties is leather, one of my favorites too.

So what is Paulette working on today?

- Well, I just created this really neat jacket, and out of the remaining fabric I decided to do a scarf, that has pockets inset.

So I can just throw it around the neck of the jacket.

- It's a great idea to, especially when you first start sewing with leather, to not worry about doing the whole entire leather jacket if that feels a little overwhelming to you, just come back and do an accessory part of it.

And so you can always pick up ideas in all these little places we visit.

There she has it, she's made a little scarf to go with.

She can put all her valuables in that little pocket.

And that is absolutely adorable, and it keeps your hands warm.

- [Paulette] Yes.

- So show me some of this.

I mean this is like I've walked all around and this is where I've landed.

This is incredible.

The colors, you've got just a whole bin of fun things to do.

- It's amazing what you can get now.

I mean there's the laser cutting, and there's so many fun options out there.

- Suede versus leather.

Suede being the backside of leather.

- Some of these are so huge, that you can really, you can really make something substantial out of it.

I've also really enjoyed when laying out a skin, and getting like a marking on it, and then making that kind of a central part of a piece.

- Thank you Paulette for sharing your knowledge.

Let's go back to the studio and learning more about leather.

That was just a lot of fun.

So what we want to do is really come back now and recognize that when we're dealing with leather, there's really two things we really have to consider.

And number one is confidence.

Confidence, it's just surprising how many women are really intimidated to go into this whole leather world.

And I find that the second part which is knowledge, the knowledge will really help that intimidation factor go way way down.

So I'm going to suggest and I wanna take a look at the mannequins, that when we start our first leather project, we start with something that isn't all leather.

Just pick up a lapel.

Pick up something that's just a little bit, so that I get used to the fact of how leather works, how it sews, how it handles, all of those things, rather than leaping into a whole entire leather garment.

We're gonna make the whole entire leather garment today, but I think just getting into it with a little bit of confidence, just a little lapel, may be a little sleeve, kind of work your way up to build that confidence.

So what I want to talk about then, is all the different kinds of leathers that are out available to us today.

Because what we'll find is that's where the knowledge will really help our confidence.

To sew all these things and not understand the basics of leather, I think is really kind of a really crazy thing to do.

All right, so let's talk knowledge.

There are so many different kinds of leathers out there.

And if you think of anything out in the wild, it can be turned into a leather.

And so, and there's real actual leathers for instance in this bag, this is a snake and that is real.

And the way you can tell it's real, is simply you can actually still feel the scales of whatever that is.

Whereas this one right here, it is snake print, stamped onto what we call, basically a lamb.

And lamb is the most common kind of leather today.

We also have what we call apparel leather.

And how you'll know it's apparel leather is the stores that are selling it will have it marked as apparel leather.

So it's a really easy thing for you to do.

However, what I would watch for, is to watch for really heavy leathers.

Because everything we find today, we can stitch on our sewing machine.

No needle changes, no thread changes, we'll get to that in a little bit more detail later when we go to the sewing machine.

But we find that lamb is the most common skin we use but we have stamped, embossed things on that to represent, and that's because our snakes and others are just more expensive.

So by taking and adding on a process to those skins, we can have a nice look, but not at the expense of what our snake or things like that will cost us.

This is, and of course, handbags are so popularly done in leather.

We're going to move to clothing, just hang on.

But this is a, what we call a laser cut leather.

And so it actually gets more pricey, because you have layers of man hours put into actually creating what the leather looks like.

So they actually cut out parts of the leather.

They come and they fill behind, and so all that kind of stuff gets expensive as there's more processes involved, and that's why the price goes up.

Again, for our first leather projects, we can simply start with something, a simple lamb, a simple collar, a welt pocket, something really really easy.

I know as you explore this world of leather, it's just too much fun.

It's just way too much fun.

This I brought because these are two examples, and this is the most expensive leather that's out there.

It's ostrich, and I've brought part of the skin.

This a handbag that was given to me.

This is a handbag I made.

If you notice the difference, that the spots, quills, whatever you want to call them, are much closer together than they are here, and they're much more fine on this one, than they are on this one.

So I brought this original skin, and this is actually more expensive than the finer one, simply because there's a more demand.

So a lot of leather pricing goes into demand and who wants it and who's willing to pay a price for it.

And so when you get into a lot of apparel, people are willing to pay, you know, they want to make sure everybody in the world knows it's ostrich, cause ostrich is one of the most expensive leathers.

So if we look at some of these garments, I'm gonna come back to this one, I don't want to go there yet.

But we also have a process of dealing with leather that's known as lamination.

So when we're laminating, you can see, it just has a little bit of polish on it.

This is really a more contemporary look to it, than what we've had in the past.

That lamination is more trendy, more recently, so also when you buy that, you know that it may not be a classic in your wardrobe.

It may be something you tire of more readily.

But you can see these are both laminates.

Then when we go do ostrich, a common thing that's done is you can see, because of the price of ostrich, it's often times mixed with a regular lamb, and so only a portion of the jacket is ostrich, and then the balance is just a regular skin, and that really works nicely.

When we deal with suede's, again it just kind of depends on how the leather is tanned.

Suede's are gonna operate pretty much the same as leathers.

The only thing I have to be careful of is when I'm laying them out, I just have to be careful of that direction, because suede will change colors from top to bottom.

But one thing I just really enjoy, is a simple little blouse done a little differently and that's the way to do it, is to pop in that leather, that suede.

This is a Sherpa.

And again, it's just a difference of how it's been tanned and the process.

So having and knowing that there's so many leathers out there, really starts to make it fun because we had all these fabrics and we've getting to where we know them and use them and we love them, but now we can take it a completely new world, and go to leathers, which really make a lot of difference.

Okay, so now I know what you're thinking.

You're thinking where do I even start.

We first want to start with selecting our leather, understanding about them, and then what I want to do is I want to go to how do I know how much leather to buy.

Because leather is sold in square feet.

And as fabric sewers, what we know is we buy everything in inches and yards, and how do I make that conversion?

So very simple to do, I'm going to again, make this jacket.

I'm going to make the jacket and the jacket requires 60 inch wide fabric and requires two yards of that 60 inch wide fabric.

So I take 60 which is the width.

I times it times 72 which is my two yards.

I'm going to convert everything to inches is what I'm going to do, and them I'm going to bring it back to square feet.

So 60 wide, 72 is my two yards, 60 times 72 is 4320 inches.

Because leather is sold in a square foot, I'm going to divide a square foot which is 12 by 12 into inches also.

So that 12 by 12 is 144.

I'm going to take the 4320, I'm going to divide by the 144 inches and I end up with 30 square feet.

So that's how many square feet I need of my leather.

Every leather piece out there that you buy, on the back of it, is going to have a marking, so that I can tell how many square feet, are in that particular skin.

Everyone out there has a marking.

And so when I look on the back, and I see, it's usually a color that easy enough, it's usually a contrast, sometimes with your darker leathers but they're all marked this way.

So that represents eight square feet.

My recommendation when you first start sewing with leather is just get the 30 feet you need and then by one extra skin.

And the most fun thing about working with leather, is you'll find so many places to put it, even if it ends up being a little button on another garment, or a little welt pocket on another garment, you'll always find uses for it.

So don't be afraid to by that extra skin.

And I would do it just for reassurance to make sure everything works great.

All right, now we know how many skins to buy.

We're gonna move these over.

We know all about our leathers.

And now what we're going to do is we're going to lay out.

We're going to lay out.

And so I'm going to recommend that you do, and I've done it, and this takes a little bit of time, but it's absolutely worth it in the end, especially dealing with your first time.

Because when I deal with leather, and when I go to lay it out, I have no grain.

I have absolutely no grain when it comes to leather.

And that can be really fun.

So I'm going to take my first piece and once you've purchased those skins and you have the amount, and you don't want to go back, because leather's kind of put together by dye lots.

And even if you have two leathers that are right by each other when you're in your leather store, or wherever you're purchasing, you just don't want to go back later and try to pick that up.

And so that's why I suggest pick up that extra skin and you'll be all the happier for it.

I want to start with my very largest pieces.

But remember I can put them any which way, so it's kind of fun.

It's kind of like a puzzle.

The reason I did duplicates of all the pattern pieces I needed, is simply so I could lay out all these pieces and then work to see which ones I needed to change up.

For example, this is my upper collar, and I only cut one, and that's my under collar.

Instead of putting a seam at center back, I put them on one straight piece.

So where my original pattern said to have this on a fold, and because I don't deal with folds when I'm dealing with leather, I went ahead and made two copies, I taped them together at center back, so now I have one and I don't have to cut it on the fold anymore.

So I went through all of my pieces and said okay which one, this is a great example of center back.

This one needed to be cut on the fold also.

So I duplicated it, so I could get a much better idea as to where it can lay out and how it can lay out.

When you're first starting with leather, I strongly would suggest that's what you do.

Because I think the hardest thing with women, or one of the fears, is they're gonna run out of leathers.

They're not going to have enough.

They're not going to see it play out.

So I just put these all on the floor.

I've got all of the pieces I need.

And I can go one by one and make sure I have enough.

Again, your littlest pieces, put those to the side, because they have a tendency to wear your cuffs.

You can work those in later.

Your underneath pieces, like this, is my front facing.

If I didn't have enough for that, I could actually just cut it and put the bottom part something else, because that's not even going to show.

Even my cuff, if I ran out, only the outside of the cuff shows, if I didn't have enough, I could put another fabric on the inside.

Just a matching regular silk or something that would just coordinate with my leather if I ran out.

So I've got my yokes.

I've got everything duplicated here.

All right, then when we go to cut, and just one more note there, my back yoke, again because I didn't want a seam at my back yoke, I went ahead and, that's on a fold, I put it together.

I find that when I'm sewing with leather, there's a lot of times I actually enjoy having a seam, where the original pattern didn't have a seam.

The bottom band is a good example.

So this is the bottom band.

It goes all the way around that bottom of that jean jacket.

And if I lay that out, again it's on a fold on the pattern, if I lay that out, you can see it takes almost the largest part of one leather going right through the middle of it.

So then I have to decide, gosh, do I want to take up that much leather, or do I want to just put a center back seam on the band and call it good.

And I've done both.

I don't think there's any, there's no standards.

The way it's done is the way it's done and it always works.

All right, so then we're gonna cut.

And the way I'm gonna cut is just kind of a hint.

Because remember that you can't have, or you don't get to have any pins.

You can use pins with leather.

I think that the fact that you can't use any pins is really an old outdated concept.

The reason being is the leathers were so thick that you really couldn't get a pin through and out.

This pins very nicely and I can iron leather.

I think people are afraid it will melt.

It's not plastic.

It's not going to melt.

So with this, which you can see, is I clearly want to cut and then once I've past, I want to turn directions and cut the other way.

So don't feel afraid.

And what I do is I just hold it in place.

I've got them all laid out.

I know I have enough space, and I'm just going to cut, cut past, to make sure that my piece and my pattern are the same.

So I'm going to take the center back, and I'm going to take a side back, and I'm going to sew those together for you on the machine just because I want you to see how incredibly easy it is.

And so you see again, there's no grain.

I can butt those pieces right up against each other, and just have fun with it.

Always, you know I always say to myself when I'm doing a leather project, it's a great excuse for a nice pair of sharp scissors, always makes things wonderful and here we go.

So this piece goes to this piece.

Let's go to the sewing machine.

Let's see how easy that is, all right.

When I'm doing the sewing machine, I didn't change anything about my needle.

I didn't change anything about my thread.

Not a big deal to change any of it.

The only thing I changed is a Teflon foot.

And what the Teflon foot does it makes it so much easier for that fabric to glide, leather, to glide underneath that position.

So here I'm going to go ahead and just put that together.

I'm going to start, and you can see that machine pulls it just like it does anything else.

I'm going to suggest to you, I always put a hand behind and I always put a hand in front, just to make sure.

So many people have said to me, gosh can I press it?

I can, I can.

If I want to I can just open that seam right up.

Now what I did, is I stitched with a white thread so that you could clearly see the contrast here.

It didn't skip a stitch, it didn't slow down, it didn't do anything.

And all of your machines will do that.

It's not any kind of special machine that you need.

You'll just find that Teflon foot is a great answer and if you can't find a Teflon foot, what you will be able to find is there's little adhesive Teflon pads and you can just put it those on any existing foot you have and that will really make the difference.

What I do often with leather is just because I like the look, it's completely optional, you don't have to do it, is I love to do a top stitching.

And the option of top stitching I think, is so pretty and it's really nice.

So I pick a spot on my foot and the only reason you want to do that is you don't want to do this twice.

You want your stitching to be straight and beautiful, so what I'm going to do is just simply pick a spot right there on my foot, and when I say that, I've got little prongs coming outside of my foot, and I'm just going to put my seam following right one of those.

I'm not even looking where I'm stitching.

I'm actually looking exactly where that seam is going into.

And so I'm going to take that out so we can see it.

And show you on the right side how beautiful that is.

So it's quick, it's simple, it's very easy.

I'm going to do that one more time, because a lot of times I will actually press both sides, I don't press either side, I actually top stitch both sides.

My particular foot has the little grooves that are even on both sides so I can actually go to either side, place that fabric exactly the same underneath, or place that leather exactly the same underneath, and I can see exactly where it's going to be even on both sides.

So this is a look that's really common for leather.

I wouldn't, you know I was just going to say, I wouldn't contrast the thread, but a lot of times you can contrast the thread.

It's beautifully done.

Again, I think probably the biggest fear, are stitching as accurate as we want it to be, or the same.

And we fear that leather's going to bunch up or hold up on us, it won't.

Get that Teflon foot and it will be incredible for you.

And I can promise you, you will have fun.

This is a whole new medium.

It's just a lot of fun to work with, and it is just fun.

So promise, start easy.

You'll have it great, you'll love it, and it's great.

And we're getting ready to graduate from design school.

But next time there's four things I learned after graduation, and I think those four things are priceless.

So we're going to see you next time, right here, on Fit 2 Stitch.

(piano music) - [Narrator] Fit 2 Stitch is made possible by Britex Fabrics.

(piano music) Vogue Fabrics, Evanston, Illinois.

(piano music) Bennos Buttons.

(piano music) Kai Scissors.

(piano music) Sew Steady.

(piano music) O. C. Sewing, Buena Park, Fullerton, Garden Grove and Irvine, California.

(piano music) Richland Sewing Center, Dallas Texas and the Metroplex.

(piano music) Cynthia's Fine Fabrics.

(piano music) And Mike Gunther Industries.