EUREKA - New stick purse pouch design (with pictures)

It's been a while since I made an progress on my stick-purse project but I think I made a really big step forward last night. I finally had the time to work on the pouch pattern for the version of the stick purse that's at the Fries Museum.

The Museum told me the dimensions of the pouch (10 cm circular base and 20 cm tall), so I made a pattern based on those dimensions. The pattern uses a round base of thicker leather, with the walls of the pouch as a single pieces that wraps around the circle and meets at the back of the pouch. I then extend the walls around the edge of the base piece and sew it to the bottom all the way around so that it gives a clean rounded edge. Then a sewed up the seam at the back.

This was my best guess as to how the pouches were done for the Fries Museum piece. I got the idea from a piece at the Museum of London.

I have to say, it looks bang-on to me. It sits the same way as the stick-purse example, and bulges at the base the same way. I think I've hit the nail on the head with the design.

Next step is to put the draw string on it, and add then to figure out the pouchlets. Then I have to start figuring out the handle.
Here's the picture of the stick-purse from the Fries Museum:

Stick-Purse - Photo courtesy of the Fries Museum in the Netherlands

And here's a picture of my mock-up that I just completed:

Planning my leatherwork class

As I've mentioned a few times, I'm planning an Intro to Leatherworking course for this fall. I'll be giving it following one of our canton meetings, although if it works out well I could probably do it at some local events as well.

The challenge is how to design a course that I can give in about an hour to an hour and a half that will teach people the basics, given that most projects will take longer than that to finish.

The concept is similar to the course I originally took from Tiberius at Practicum several years ago, which is what got me started in leatherworking. I want people taking the class to end up with a useful project, so I was going to use the making of a belt pouch as the vehicle for them to learn the basic skills. That being said, most useful belt pouches will take a new person more than an hour to make, so the trick will be cutting some corners by doing some of the more monotonous work for them in advance, but still walking them through the process so that they know how to do it for themselves later.

My plan, as mentioned here is to use my own design for the pouch. That way I'm not infringing on any copyrights if I share the pattern with people. Here are more pictures of the ones I did for ComicCon.

For the hand out, I'm thinking of doing it step by step, with tips and info for each step included as they go. The annex will include the research I did with links to artwork showing the style of pouch from the period, as well as a list of good resources for period leatherworking as well as local sources for supplies.

Quick outline of the handout would be:

Intro
Basic tools and equipment
Picking your leather
Cutting the pattern
Sewing the pieces together
Embellishments to consider
Annex - Research and other resources

For the class itself, I'll quickly go over the different kinds of leather, the basic tools and materials we'll be using and a bit about belt pouches before we start the project.

I'll probably pre-cut the pieces and punch the holes but I'll bring some scraps and my hole punches so that people can learn the skills without having to spend 20 minutes cutting and punching everything (especially since I won't have enough punches/awls etc. for everyone to use at the same time). I figure about 15 minutes for the intro and showing them the punches.

For the stitching section, it's really just a matter of showing them some basic stuff. I'll probably show them the different materials for sewing the pieces together (waxed linen thread, fake sinew etc.) and then the saddle stitch, and then let them get to work assembling the pouches. I figure giving about 45 minutes for the sewing, during which time I'll wander and answer questions or help people along if they are having trouble.

After 45 minutes has past, I'll stop people and show them some of the things they can do to spruce up their pouches. Some of these are things that would need to be done during construction, others at the end. This would include putting the little closure button on it, putting trim on the belt pouch loop to clean up the lines, adding an applique, tassels, pouchlets etc. I'll show them pictures of examples. I figure this would be about 10 minutes.

After that I'll open the floor to questions for 5-10 minutes (or as long as people want to go).
That brings me in at about an hour and 15 minutes depending on the length of the question period at the end, which is probably as short as I can reasonably get and still have people learn the skills.

Any ideas or comments from my readers on the course? Suggestion on how I can improve the outline before I get to far into it? Is teh timeline reasonable? Does it sound like it might be helpful or interesting?

Picture - ComicCon pouches

For those interested, I thought I'd post a picture of the five pouches done so far for ComicCon before I deliver them to Eluned this weekend.

Hopefully they'll go over well.

ComicCon pouches update

I'm making progress but time is running out. So far I have 5 pouches done or within minutes of being done. Two are blue, two green and one red.

Of course, the problem is that I'm trying to get them to Eluned when I see her this coming weekend since ComicCon is the following weekend and I don't know if I'll see her during the week.

Still, even if I don't get any more done, five is still pretty good given the amount of work that goes into each one. They've turned out pretty nice.

Before I do any more I'm going to have to go down to the basement and cut out more pieces, which takes a bit more time. That may slow things down to the point where I won't get any more completed. Although, if I can get more done by Saturday of ComicCon I suppose I can always drop them off when we go ourselves. They probably don't need all of them first thing in the morning.

I'm also figuring some things out for what I want to do with this pattern when it comes to the class I'm teaching in the fall, but I'll put that in another post (so I don't forget my ideas) later in the week.

Pouches for ComicCon

I've finally started work on the pouches I promised Eluned for the newcomers kits the Barony will be selling to try to make back some of the costs of getting a booth at ComicCon in Ottawa in May. I think the booth is a great recruitment idea, so I was happy to offer to do up some basic leather pouches, but that was several months ago and we're now getting to crunch time.

From my previous post, it's obvious the circle pouch idea was a no-go, I'm not wasting that much leather!

I'm using some of my garment-weight pig skins that I have in my stash. The colours aren't so bright that they are obviously modern, but I haven't been using it as much lately as I've shifted to using more veg tan (as much as possible) to bump up the period-ness of my projects.

Design-wise, I've thrown out the circle pouch and decided to go with one of the custom designs I did earlier for potential use with my stick-purse project. The design details and pictures are here.

I had a few reasons for picking this design:

1) The pattern was developed based on artwork, so it shows the fact that we do historical research, not just dress up in costumes.

2) It's a fairly unisex design. I thought about doing scalloped draw string pouches, or some of my other patterns I've made before but they tend to be focused on one gender or the other. This way, all of the pouches will be the same (except for the colours) and Eluned won't have to differentiate which kits she gives people.

3) It's a new design so it's not like there are dozens of people walking around with pouches that I've made that look the same. On the other side, it doesn't reduce the uniqueness of some of the other pouches I've custom made for people previously.

4) Selfishly, it's good practice and will help me fine-tune the design in case I decide to use it for a future stick-purse.

I went to fight practice yesterday with Avelyn, and was able to cut out the pouch body pieces for three of them (one red and two dark blue). Still have a bunch more to cut out, plus the draw strings and belt loops/flaps. I'm taking some time off from work next week, and one of the things I plan to do is churn these out and get them done so I can get them to Eluned with lots of time to spare.

The Demise of the Circle Pouch

I've offered to make a few leather pouches as part of a fund raiser that our Barony is doing in a few months. Skraeling Althing has paid for an exhibitor table at the upcoming ComicCon in Ottawa and to make back some of the cost, they are putting together some newcomer kits that will be sold at the event.

I wanted something that would be simple to make, as I don't have a lot of time to add new projects to my plate. Looking at my patterns, it occurred to me that the simplest pattern would be a circle pouch ( I know, I can already hear the snickering from those who have made them before, just wait for it).

For those not as familiar with pouches, a circle pouch is a super-basic design. It's essentially a large circle (duh) of fabric or leather. You make some holes around the outside for a drawstring and then, when you pull the drawstring tight, you have a pouch. Easy, right?

So I pulled out my patterns, which had a couple of circle pouches, and I noticed that the circles were HUGE. I mean, the largest one probably had a diameter of  close to two feet. Who would need a circle pouch that big (I thought). So, I pulled out a larg-ish kitchen bowl, probably about a foot in diameter, and traced that for the pattern. Great plan, right?

Maybe not so much. I cut out the circle from my leather (fortunately just some of my fabric-weight green pigskin) but before I punched the holes I took the edges of the pouch and bunched them up to see the pouch - or what should have been a pouch. Alas, that big circle I cut barely made a coin purse.

Having never made a circle pouch before, I did learn some important lessons from this exercise.

First of all, these pouches are extremely wasteful. In addition to the size of the circle you need to cut, there's a lot of wasted leather around the shape, because it's hard to fit anything else around the outside of a round shape. As a result, you end up with a lot of scrap leather that can't really be used for anything else. So while they are "easy" to make, this would explain why they aren't all that common in the SCA for anything beyond a change purse. It just isn't cost efficient and frankly, I value leather enough to not want to waste it like that.

It does make me wonder about their use in period though. I can't imagine that leatherworkers in period would have used such a wasteful design very often. I'm also tempted to throw my stick-purse theory out the window that they may have used this design for the main pouches, it just doesn't seem to fit the efficiency they used with other elements of the design. It leads me to think the design is more something like this (without all the decorations of course, and different dimensions), which is similar to the one done by NP Historical Shoes.

Latest updates on to-do list

Rather than updating my to-do list from October, I thought I'd start a new post. I haven't got much done since before Christmas, but I did get a few items crossed off and, of course, I've added a number of new items.

1. Figure out engineering and pattern for stick-purse pouches
2. Replace Avelyn's favour (likely make a second more sturdy one for wearing in armour as well)
3. Develop carving pattern for my heraldry and badge
4. Finish Avelyn's lamellar
5. Start work on designing new leather leg pieces for Avelyn's new knee armour
6. Do "commissioned" children's archery glove for Eluned
7. Do "commissioned" belt favour (with award badges) for Robert the Blue
8. Design and make drinking horn hanger for Vod (based on Morag's design)
9. Talk to Nathaniel about herald's folder project for Harrowgate
10. Figure out shoe pattern
11. Help Catherine with her quiver project (if she still needs help)
12. Make some basic pouches for the newcomer kit fund-raiser at ComiCon
13. Track down my comments from Kingdom A&S
14. Prep materials for leatherworking class for Harrowgate Heath - for the fall