In an earlier post there was a video of a sporran maker who added a leather lace braid pattern to the face of the sporran he was making. It was a little difficult to see exactly how he did it, but I think I caught enough to get the idea. This past week I've been experimenting on some scrap leather and Saturday and today I put it on the front panel of a sporran I'm working on.
Here are the pics and some explantation. When I have the chance I'll add the link to the video.
Here is a pic of the finished panel. I've yet to add the gusset. The sporran will be black. I don't have good lighting at my workbench yet.
I'm about half-way around here. First step is to put in a double row of parallel stitches. (To make these you make a stitch through two holes then back up halfway on the first stitch and through the leather. It is parallel stiches, but you only use one lace.) You can see these to the right side of the needle.
I used two sizes of lacing. The base course of parallel stitches is 1/8 inch lacing. The top layer (which does not go through the sporran panel) is 3/32 inch lacing. On the above picture, from the outside you go under two of the base layer stitches. On this image, going from the inside out, you go over the inside stitch and under the outside stitch. This is not exactly how the sporran maker did it but I think it looks nice.
This pic shows the back side of the front panel.
I guessed the amount of lace needed. I was pretty close. I measured the distance at 30 centimeters and pulled off about 120 cm or 4 times the length for the 1/8 inch lace. Should have pulled off about 5 times the length.
For the 3/32 inch lace I pulled off 150 cm and that was about right.
The spacing for the punch holes for the 1/8 inch lace was about 6.5 mm apart.
I scribed a center line and then punched holes with a chisel punch on either side about 6.5 cm apart. This could be stretched to 7mm or 8mm.
It was a lot of work. About 4 hours. And my fingers are sore. But I may use it again in the future.
Hope this might help someone out there who wants to try something different.
Regards,
Tom
You will have to wait awhile to see the finished project. I have carved a new design that I think looks good.
http://ssa.nls.uk/film.cfm?fid=0958
Here is the link for the video clip
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