Leather Inductions

Today we had leather inductions on the Walking frog, Disk post, Disk machines, and Twin needle. These were so that we could work with leathers so that we could make our shoes but also in case we wanted to change to accessories and do things like bags etc, or use leather in our collections. The machines which have posts/arms are the ones that are best used when you have a curved surface such as a shoe since it allows you to get into more angles far more easily than the flat machines. The machines are designed for heavy weight materials or leather which would quickly break a normal sewing needle that you use on fabric, as you can see in the bottom pictures once you sew onto leather you can't unpick otherwise you are left with a row of holes where the needle went in (top of the bottom picture).

This means that if in future I want to make any garments out of leather I need to become much more efficient at using the machines so that I can sew it right first time,since I can't unpick and leathers are expensive. I can do this by sewing more garments since it will improve my sewing abilities and by practicing on scraps of leather that are laying around so that I can practice simple shapes like circles etc which will help me later with more complicated patterns.