Wednesday, December 16, 2020

Recycling the leather

I've been thinking about the leather I got when I removed the stool cover during the smaller upholstery project. There's quite a bit of it, and I want to find a practical way of using it. One of the ideas I had was to make a bag, but I already have one made of leather. My aunt made it and gave it to my mother and I got it when the house was being emptied for sale. It's probably made from furniture industry's leftover pieces and I'm its third owner so far, so it's a well recycled item already.


On the right in the picture are the pieces from the stool. The rectangular pieces (a few dozen) are from the sides and the rest from the top. The top pieces are thinner and more worn than the side pieces, so they're also softer. I like the worn look of the top pieces, but the area they cover isn't large, so they can't be used for anything big. Another restriction is that I haven't sewn leather with a sewing machine before, so I don't want the first project to be anything too complicated. I guess I'll just leave those pieces alone for now and try to figure out something useful.

I think these were originally pieces left over from making bigger furniture, because there was no need to have so many small side panels in the stool otherwise, considering the amount of work the sewing must have required. Then they served their purpose for over 20 years before ending up this way, waiting for their next purpose.

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