Our recent obsession with LARPing has encouraged me to pull the trigger on a craft I have had my eye on for years. We decided to pull the trigger about a month ago, buying a cheap beginner toolset off of TEMU and then picking up a couple of leather patterns. First, let me say that I am pleasantly surprised by the kit we received from TEMU. Despite the tools coming in a pleather tool roll (ironic) the rest of the stuff in the kit seems solid enough and is more than enough to get me started in the hobby.
It just so happens that Tandy Leather, one of the largest leather retailers, is in the Chicago area so Megan and I had the opportunity to head up to their warehouse to buy some stuff. The staff there were absolutely fantastic at helping us with all of our questions and to get us started with some leather purchases.
I picked up two projects to start myself off with. The first was a leather pouch kit that had all of the leather pre-cut. I basically just had to stamp, stain and stitch it all together. This was a great first project as I got to play around with almost all of the tools and techniques except the cutting.
The second project was a pattern for a sword frog. This one I did have to do some cutting and that proved to be a very good learning experience. I also found that the tool that makes the holes for the stitches is a lot more difficult to use than you would initially expect, so I have to work on some stitching.
I'm pretty happy with how my first two projects turned out though.