I recently picked up a nice haul of vegetable leather from Swedish tannery Tärnsjö Garveri. The leather used for this apron is too thick if anything, but I wanted to try and make a really heavy duty apron.

I made a pattern design in two pieces – shown below is a bottom piece.

The top and bottom pieces are mirrored.

I attached the two top pieces to eachother. After double-checking that I had managed to cut straight lines, I applied contact cement to the edges and carefully forced them together. They are not skived as there is no overlap of leather.

I used a pricking wheel to mark the stitching holes on one side, and then a scratch awl to mark the holes individually on the adjoining piece. This was to ensure that the holes would produce neat squares.

Then I stitched it up, and did the same thing with the two bottom pieces.

When the top and bottom pieces were stitched separately, I put it all together.

I hand burnished the edges with gum tragacanth.

No studs or rivets were used, but I made and hand stitched these thingies on.

The straps were made with spine from 1st grade Italian veg tanned calf.

And here’s the finished product:

Action shot: