As an intermission from shoemaking, I made a vegetable tanned calf handbag for my mother’s birthday.
Unlike my previous bags, this has the feature of an interior pocket. Here’s an inside look:
To make it, I started by cutting out, skiving, burning and painting some 4 oz veg tanned calf pieces for the outside of the bag.
I cemented 5 oz latigo tanned reinforcement leather onto the inside of the body of the bag.
I folded the upper edges over the reinforcement pieces. Then I lined the side pieces with 2 oz baby calf, and cemented them to the body like shown below.
I cemented and stitched on the lined top piece of the handbag (also reinforced like the body). I stitched the lined side pieces of the bag. I also put in some reinforcement fabric around the various parts.
Then I put in a magnet lock, lined the rest of the bag and put a separately sewn inside pocket into the interior. I stitched the rest of the bag up with 1 mm waxed polyester thread.
Here’s the finished bag in my garden:
Secret Cobbler 
Hello
I hope you are making progress on your last pair of shoes (or maybe you are on holidays, taking a well deserved break from shoemaking..)
I just wanted to let you know that my blog is now online.
I present my last pair (semi brogue derby), with a lot of photos and explanations. Unfortunately, it’s in french (for now… I am planning to translate it soon).
You can find it at: https://ducuiretdubois.wordpress.com
Best regards
Antoine
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Hello Antoine,
Sorry for the late reply, and thank you for the link! I have had less time for shoemaking since summer vacation came to an end a few weeks ago… Congrats on the blog – even though I of course can’t understand it (but google translate can help a little) it looks very nice! Looks like some beautiful work – and that last pair only took some 60 hours? I will be sure to go in and read some more using google translate. 🙂
Kind regards
/R
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