I went into the leather workshop intending to answer questions about how best to go about the stopwatch case that Daan wants made for his new analog watch, and I did that (use neoprene, come up with some clear plastic band across the front, and then cover it with leather if you want) but I came out with this, that I made under the guidance of Baroness Etheldred Nic Eoghainn – she’s called Dredda.

Isn’t that lovely?  I’m going to sew it on my do-bag that I made out of my embroidered herbal.  But of course I could use many of these, as I expect my friends could too.  So now I want leatherwork tools, but it’s clear that many things will work, and as I already have craft blades and such, I don’t need to be scared of playing with leather any more.  I used a font template, a bit of mylar sheet, an X-acto knife, two different shapes of pressing tools to compress the leather, and a punch to make this nameplate.  Dredda suggested that I might use any sort of dye or acrylic paint to tone the background, and then polyurethane the whole thing to make the color durable.

Dredda did a great job both of teaching us in a staggered workshop format, which can try the patience of any teacher, and of constructing a handout that’s very helpful to the memory.   Woohoo!  Yet another skill!

I saw on someone else, a pair of ghillies made in a class, for a class fee of $25.  They didn’t have heavy soles put on yet, but that doesn’t seem hard.  I want to try those, or period shoes of some kind – to buy them was about $80.