Original subtitles

hey everybody

so we had a big long three-part project

uh the last couple weeks

so today i figured we'd make just

something simple but that explores um

a couple different stitching techniques

that we haven't really gotten into

because honestly i don't do them too

much but once you learn how to do them

they kind of unlock a whole

plethora of different projects

three-dimensionally that you can make

and we're going to explore the butt

joint and the box joint today by making

just a simple cylindrical pen holder

so i have some scrap from the bag that

we used last week and this is going to

be really good to practice

butt joints and box joints if you've

never done them because you want

something that's a little bit

thicker you can do these joints on thin

leathers

with some practice but what we're going

to be doing is we're actually we're not

going to be going through

this way we're going to be going through

at an angle on some of these and if you

use like a 5

6 ounce leather it's going to let you

have give you

plenty of room to get your all through

so i'm using

um i have my calipers set we're gonna

make a cylinder i'm using

um this is set to an inch and a half

which will give us a three inch circle

that's going to be our base so i'm just

going to trace out on the flesh side not

the grain side

a three inch circle and we'll cut this

out and you want to be careful that

you're not you can dull these down

since this is just practice i'm just

using the ones that i always use but you

don't want to push all the way through

so you have a hole in the back

just be light with it or use a

three-inch template

to print out on your computer and then

i'm going to cut this out first

so i have a four inch strip of leather

for my walls i want to be four inches

tall

and all i did was um because i don't

have a pattern or anything

i just kind of wrapped it around the

cylinder or the circle that i cut to

form the cylinder

and marked where i wanted to end and you

can see

that's going to match perfectly now

you can join this seam in many ways you

can do like a baseball stitch you can do

like

loop it around but what we want to do is

a butt joint what a butt joint is

it's going to look pretty much just like

any other saddle stitch on both sides

that's the we want to do that first

before we attach it to the base

but we have to punch everything on this

piece

and on this piece before we start

assembling everything so first thing

we're going to do is i'm going to finish

the edges

because once this is together you can't

you can burnish a little bit but

it's much easier to do everything first

so on my top since i'm not going to have

any stitching at

all which of course you could just do a

a stitch just for aesthetics

i'm going to bevel both sides

so it'll be nice and rounded

and i'm also going to do that on the

bottom

so i'm gonna burnish all four sides i'm

not gonna bevel

the two sides where i'm gonna do my butt

joint but i am gonna burnish them just

so that when i put them together it

looks a little bit

neater even though we're going to be

punching holes through these sides you

know it just makes it

keeps it nice and tidy so i have these

burnished i'm just using gum drag

and my canvas like i always do and i'm

going to burnish

the top now and then the last thing i'm

going to do

is i'm going to burnish the circular

base

as well and i'm going to treat that

similar to the

butt joints on this piece so these sides

i'm not going to bevel anything i'm just

going to burnish it

and you can do a little bit of sandpaper

if your circular cut isn't perfect

so now it's time to lay out our stitches

i have my other divider set with my

normal

let's see if i can get a measurement for

you because a lot of people always ask

i am going one

about three millimeters

from the edge on this and i'm gonna go

around my bottom

and then on the sort of body piece we're

only going to do

three sides

now circles they're not hard just take

your time and kind of rotate i like to

rotate

the piece and that'll get us a nice line

pick your top

doesn't matter which i'm going to go

with this is the top

so i'm going to start here i'm not going

to go all the way to the top here

i'm going to go a little bit below it

then i'm going to do my whole bottom

and then i'm going to do the other side

and the same i'm going to stop a little

bit above the top there

so there are a couple different types of

awls if you are using if you're used to

using

pricking irons then you're probably only

using a scratch hall now this is a round

point at all

and it's only really meant for tracing

out

patterns the other type of all is a

diamond doll and this is for

um french style leatherwork mostly

hermes uses it

this one's very old and really messed up

but i've been using it for

gosh 15 years when i do this type of

work and it's never let me down

so with this sort of all you have more

it's not the same profile

but you have a diamond profile similar

to a diamond stitching chisel

and you strop it just like you would

a a skiving knife but you do it on all

four sides

this one's already fairly stroked

um this is just some stripping compound

on some veg tan

and the way that we're going to do this

is we're going to start first with our

butt joint

so the butt joint is going to be the

joint that

puts both of these together like this so

we don't want to see any stitches on the

inside

and we don't want to do any looping

around

now most people are used to punching all

the way through with the stitching irons

we're actually and this is how it's done

in uh french leather work sometimes too

we're only going to use these to mark

our stitches and you can use an over

stitch wheel for this too if you have

one

so what i'm going to do is to make sure

that our stitches line up i'm going to

hang my first prong

over the end of the top of my piece

and then i'm gonna use that as the

spacing and i'm just using

hand pressure to make little marks i'm

not going really deep into the leather

and i'm gonna do that on both sides now

for a butt joint

all of the stitches on both sides we're

going to come in with our

diamond awl and we're going to punch our

holes

at a 45 degree angle but for a box joint

we need

one piece at a 45 degree punch to the 45

the other piece can be punched all the

way through like normal

so for this piece because we have to get

all the stitches punched out before we

start assembling

i'm going to go down now and i'm just

going to punch through like this is a

wallet or a bag or anything

just boom boom boom boom straight

through at a 90 degree angle

to the edge of the leather

now for our circular piece we're going

to mark our stitches out just like we

did on the sides of our body piece

for our butt joint this is going to be

the box joint i'm using my two prong

stitching iron because it's a full curve

and that will allow us to mark even

stitches around the whole curve

and i'm also using the same spacing for

both

my body piece and my base piece now what

you can do

is you can use a larger spacing for your

body piece

and a smaller spacing for this base

piece because

we're going to end up and i'll show you

how to do it you're going to end up

having to skip stitches

to keep up with the stitching because

you just naturally have

a longer piece around the outside but

i'm just going to show you how to skip

the stitches because

it is a little bit of work to match up

the right two sets of stitching irons to

do it the other way

so the first thing i'm gonna do is i'm

just gonna

go around take my time and i'm just

putting one prong in the existing hole

and

the second prong i'm making my new mark

and that will ensure that every single

hole

is evenly spaced so now comes the part

where we have to punch our 45s

and it kind of feels daunting but it's

actually pretty i find it pretty

relaxing and pretty

fun you just want to make sure that you

have a nice

uh burn a polished all blade and you

want to hold it at the right angle

so let me get

here we go here's some scrap

and here is

a little line of stitches

all right so our goal is to punch

from here through

the flesh of our leather here now

you want to make sure that you're

holding your awl straight

and as you can see if you hold all

straight

you get a nice little hole that goes all

the way through

if you're holding your all at an angle

what will happen is

you'll cut basically because these are

very sharp you'll cut basically

a little line sideways like this and

when you stitch

this will come up and it won't look very

good

and it can rip over time so we want to

make sure

that we're holding it as best we can

and that we're not too far away from the

edge now we can tap this down with a

hammer

after we're all stitched up

and flatten that all nice totally good

and all of our holes are coming through

the edge here

but i would suggest if you've never done

this before grab some scrap and just

practice it

it's not very hard and once you kind of

unlock this and have this in your

bag of tricks um you can make so much

cool stuff with it

so i like to do these punches into a

cutting mat

because i find that if i do them off the

edge like this

i tend to and this is a personal thing

but i tend to push my all too far

so when i do them into a cutting mat

what happens is i know that once i hit

the cutting mat

my stitch is good and i'm just going to

work my way down

and you can see how with practice you

get the perfect angle

to hold your

you're all at so you can get every

single one at the right angle

or at the at the same angle

you can also see how i'm not going in an

angle i'm going in straight

so that we're not getting you know we're

a little bumpy but we're not getting any

of those cuts or anything like that

because we're not at an angle

and then this last one has a hole that

goes through for our bottom

but i'm also going to punch one at a

side

now we just flip it over and we do our

other side

so now that we have all of our holes

punched i just have a needle here and

you can see

the path that the stitch is going to

take it's going to come

right in the middle of the flesh which

is okay because the grain is our real

strength here

so this is basically just like if you

had a two ounce leather

you're getting that same strength and

you can see

because we use that cutting board as our

stopping point

we pretty much have the same exit point

right in the middle

on every single one of our holes and

that is a thing that takes practice so

i would encourage if you want to learn

this stitch to just get a bunch of scrap

you know that's my favorite way to tell

you guys how to practice

get a bunch of scrap and just practice

this over and over and over again

until you have the muscle memory where

you know exactly how to hold the awl

and it doesn't take much time at all

it's not a super hard thing to learn

but you can see that all of our stitches

are now coming out directly in the

middle

of this seam and they'll come out in the

middle of the other seam too

so when we stitch them together you're

never going to see

any thread on the inside of our pencil

cup

and it also helps if you're just

learning to use a hot stuff leather

because there are lots of oils in this

leather

that are going to help your blade glide

through nice and smoothly

whereas some veg tins are a little dry

and the last thing you want while you're

learning how to do this is to be

struggling pushing this all through

so with the circle what i like to do is

i just

i make sure i get my grip right and i

like to put

i use kind of a long all on on a box

joint this is

not punching through on a stitching pony

just on a box joint like this

i like a long all that i can rest in the

palm of my hand

so that my fingers are only doing sort

of the directing

and my arm is doing the pushing you

shouldn't have to push hard you want

your blade to be nice and smooth and

sharp

with a circular one i'm going to

basically do what i did

with the last one i'm going to punch

through like that

then i'm going to rotate my piece a

little bit so that i'm always punching

directly through

every single hole i'm gonna rotate the

piece and it helps to use

a cutting board with marks in it because

i know so this is my little line that

i'm lining up with

every hole i'm just rotating to line up

with that line

first thing we're going to do is we're

going to sew up the butt joint on the

body of the cup what i like to do is i

take a little bit of painters tape

and i put it on one side and then i fold

this over and i actually think i learned

this from a youtube video

a few years ago i forget who made it

but thank you for that video and we're

gonna put this on the other side

like so and then

depending on the leather um you can fold

it over if it's going to tear up i'll

have you

using like a sort of a delicate leather

you want to be careful

but um then i'll usually rip this

put this kind of right there and right

there and it looks weird

but it does the trick just enough you

can see when this is bent in

that all of our holes line up and it's

just kind of an extra hair pair of hands

i'm going to use some white ritz a tiger

thread just so we can see it on camera

of course if you wanted to do a matching

brown whatever

go for it so i'm starting my first hole

i'm going to kind of wiggle through to

my first hole on the other side

get that up through sorry my second hole

get that up through and pull my needles

so that they're even and then it's just

like any other saddle stitch just like a

little bit sideways

and after every stitch we're going to

pull tight

to get that seam nice and tight

so

so for a backstitch it's nothing fancy

it's really just exactly like a normal

backstitch i've gone back to

i'm just going to go back one more

on each side making sure that the

stitches stack and you might have to

wiggle a little bit

but it's pretty easy to get through and

then we're just going to clip these

like we normally do fairly short

a on a joint like this i like to do them

on either side so they're kind of uh

they're even and they balance out um on

wallets and stuff like when you can hide

it i'll usually do it on

a single side but then we'll just do a

little melt

and there we go so now that we have this

done we can remove our tape from the

inside

and we have our finished butt joint now

what i like to do with these

this is called a cobbler's anvil and

what it's great because you can slide

forms like this over it

and then i'm gonna take my quarter

pounder or you can use a crate hammer or

whatever

stitching hammer that you have and i'm

just gonna tap this seam lightly

and then i'm gonna

just use my canvas and you can see that

once you do that

you get a super super tight seamless

looking

i mean you can still see a little seam

but it's very tidy because we burnish

that

everything is nice and crisp and if you

look at the inside you have no stitching

at all so the next step and our last

step

is to stitch our bottom onto our pencil

cup and we'll have a finished piece

okay so with the glue dry your holes

it's important to note

they're not going to line up perfectly

because there's a lot more holes on the

outside than there has on the inside

because the stitch line is shorter on

the inside because it's a smaller circle

but that's okay we show you how to

stitch holes i'll show you how to skip

holes so what i like to do is

i like to get this pretty much lined up

right

where i want it and then i flip it over

and i use my workbench

to sort of stick that in

and push it down so that we get a

perfect right angle

and you are going to have to kind of

push it a little bit that's why i don't

like to use a lot of glue because you

don't want it to stick immediately

there we go so once i have it close what

i do and i don't know if this is right

it's just the way that i've always done

it

is i get it and i just kind of

tap it on the workbench and that usually

gets me

even all the way around and then i'll go

around and i'll press the inside

the seam a bit just to get that glue

sticking and you will have like a little

bit there

you know use your workbench and now

we're ready to sew

so what i'm going to do is i'm going to

pick a point where

it looks like the stitches are pretty

much lined up

and i'm going to start from there first

so i have a stitch

here and a stitch here that are

basically perfectly lined up

so i'm going to start with that one and

i'm going to stick i like to go from

the top where i've done my angled

stitch holes and then kind of press down

and go through then i'm going to get my

second one started

and there's our first stitch

so we're going to want to make sure that

we're pulling these tight as we go along

that's going to be very important so

we'll just pull tight like that and then

we go to the next hole so we've stitched

a few stitches here and you can see it's

going well but

you can see as we get going we have a

stitch hole here

with no stitch hole here so we need to

skip that stitch

the way you do that is we're going to

take our thread

and we're going to go through the new

hole on one side

we're gonna go through and this can be a

little bit tricky

we're going to go through the existing

hole on the other side

so now we have two stitches coming

through the same hole

we're going to take our other thread and

we're going to go

out and into

that new hole like that

you don't want to pull too tight on

these and then that lines us back up

for our next hole where you can see we

go right

in and right through

and we're a little bit behind but that's

okay because we're gonna catch up and

have to do that probably every

you know six or seven stitches and then

we're gonna

pull that nice and tight and just keep

going along on our way

and so the same with these as on the

butt stitch

i'm just gonna back stitch two or three

only this time i'm going to end my

stitch

on the bottom because of course

it'll be sitting on a table

so you won't ever be able to see it

and here we go so this is sort of a

simple application of these stitches

but we have our nice right angle bottom

um a nice cup that stands up straight

and you can see on the inside

well hopefully you can see the inside no

stitching

um because of that butt joint and a nice

right angle that's going to stay that

way

and final test

nice little pen cut so thank you guys so

much for watching

um i'm excited to see you guys give this

a try if you haven't tried it already

super fun just remember you're using you

want a diamond all you don't want a

scratch all for this project

um thank you guys so much for watching

and we'll see in the next one

you