5-10 oz VEGETABLE tanned leather for bottle (2.5 sq. ft.)

Waxed linen thread, artificial sinew, (real sinew?) (2-4 yds.)

Pitch/Beeswax mixture

Clean playground sand

Dowel piece or stick the diameter of the bottle neck

Leather dyes or mink oil

Leather needles (min of 2, recommend 4, should be harness (rounded) but can use glovers if careful)

Binder clips, clothes pins, etc. 7-15

Sharp leather knife, utility knife or shears

Tracing wheel, fork, or small ruler

Awl or sharp small nail & hammer

Board to bear down on

Water

Bottle brush (optional)

Foil

Masking tape

Tub or basin of some sort to soak it in

Coffee can

Funnel

Hotplate

Newspapers & messy clothes

Pot holders

July 11^th:

1) Decide what you are doing and create a pattern:

First thing to do is to decide what shape you would like your bottle to be in. I recommend making a “flat” bottle as your first project. I will have a basic pattern in several sizes.  

If you want to design your own, draw it out to create a pattern. There are several important things to double check, so talk with me about your plan before you cut out anything. Remember when designing the mouth of the bottle, make it a little bigger than your dowel. This will be your first stitching line. Add 1.5-2 cm on all sides except the opening of the mouth of bottle to allow your seam allowance.  Your second stitching line will fall within this, but don’t worry about that yet. Add on flaps for your “handles” or “loops” and draw in where the holes will be in these.  Now you have a pattern.

2) Cut out your leather:

Put your leather face (pretty) side down on a clean smooth surface. Lay your pattern out on your leather. Trace around it onto your leather. (Always try to mark on the inside, so that if you screw up, you don’t have to look at the redrawn line later.)  Try to avoid using any pieces with major flaws, as these may stretch at a different rate. Cut out the tracing. Unlike cutting cloth, unless you are really good, and you have really sharp cutting instruments that creates no friction (like say a laser beam), you should only cut out one layer at a time.  Your two pieces need to be mirror images, so remember to flip your pattern over to cut out the second one. If you find that difficult to remember, you can use the piece you just cut out as a pattern for the next piece; as long as you make sure you have the opposite side facing up (like sides together).  Make sure your blade cuts straight up and down, so that you do not bevel the edges.

Take your two pieces and place them inside to inside and check that your pieces are symmetrical. Check that they still appear to be mirror images. If they are not, trim them until they are.

I profess an ignorance of when would be the best time to tool the leather of your bottle. I would recommend you do that BEFORE stretching, or while stretched out but still filled with sand. If you do it before stretching, the design will probably be a little distorted by the stretch. If you do it after, you will be working on a round surface, which is probably harder to do. DO NOT CUT INTO YOUR LEATHER. You run a very real chance of it splitting when you stretch it out!

3) Mark your stitching lines:

Taking one of your pieces and flip it over to the rough side. Mark your stitching lines. You should make two of them…one following the outside contours at 1 or 1.25 cm  inches from the edge, and the second .5 cm in from that, with it following the outline of the inside of your bottle. These lines should only diverge when going round the tabs. You can either scratch them, or even use a pen or pencil and write them. Now, take your tracing wheel, fork, or ruler and mark out where the actual stitch holes should go… probably .5 cm apart.  Take your awl and lightly poke the holes so that you can see where they are from the outside of the leather.

4) Stitching

Take 2 needles and one piece of sinew about 3 feet long. Thread a needle on each end of the sinew, folding back about 3-4 inches of “tail” at each end.

Take your two leather pieces and place them inside to inside again. This time, clip them together with lots of clips so that they are being held together firmly all the way around. (Some recommend contact cement). 

Lay your bottle FLAT on the board. Still using your awl, start at the inner seam at the edge of the neck, poke about 5 real holes worth of seam. I usually poke from the side marked enough to get the tip of the point through the back side. Then I flip it over and poke coming from the other direction. You want your hole to be just big enough for at least one needle to pass through while a piece of thread is already in the hole, not any bigger, or your will likely have leaks.

Begin sewing. You will pass each needle through each hole, one coming from each direction. (This is kind of hard to explain, so pay attention in class). You will need to backstitch at the beginning of the neck to help reinforce it. You also can use backstitching if you run out of sinew before you are done. In this way, you can avoid having lots of knots on your piece.

Anyway, you will continue to poke a few holes, and then sew them, and then poke some more holes…continuing around the bottle. Your sewing should be snug, but do not pull so tight that you cut the leather. You will probably find that you need a pair of pliers to pull the needle through.

YOU WILL NEED TO FINISH STITCHING UP YOUR BOTTLE ON YOUR OWN BETWEEN CLASSES.

5) Cutting out the tabs

Once your bottle is sewn up, you should cut out the holes in the tabs. This is easier to do when it is still flat, before stretching.

July 18^th:

6) Soaking:

Once you have sewn all the way around the both the 1^st and 2^nd seams, your bottle is ready to be stretched. Fill your tub with water. Soak the flat, but sewn together bottle to soften the leather. About a ½ hour should do it, but leaving it in longer doesn’t really hurt either. You want the leather to get as stretchy as it can before you start to work it.

7) Stretching and Shaping:

When it is thoroughly soaked, pry open the mouth of the bottle with your fingers, awl, or a popsicle stick. Poke your dowel in it to round it out a little bit, but be careful not to misshape it. Start adding sand. I have heard of adding “warm” sand, but I don’t think the temperature is really crucial. I do try to keep the outsides of the bottle damp so the leather doesn’t start to harden before I’m ready, but I don’t want the sand to get needlessly damp either. Placing the bottle in the basin and redampening the outside is good enough. Keep adding sand and pushing it down or out to get the desired shape for your bottle. If you want the bottom to be flat, make sure you rest it on its bottom. Likewise, if you wish the bottom to be rounded, your will need to find a way to let it dry without squashing it flat. Corked and upside down in something might work, as perhaps in a bowl of similar roundness. Hanging suspended from its tabs might work, but it also might be too much stress/weight and warp your tabs or (horrors!) your neck! Either way, fill it up good and tight.

Some other words of warning, you will need to shape it out as you go. Don’t fill it completely with sand and then try to push out the lowest spot.

Also, be careful of stretching your neck. If it needs extra reinforcement, you can use a film canister with the bottom cut out, or other similar cylindrical items that you can pour sand through.

July 25^th:

8) Drying

When it is the desired shape, put it in a dry area for several days to finish drying. I would recommend this being indoors, so that humidity and dew doesn’t slow down the process.  After it seems totally dry, empty the sand out. (It can be reused in future projects.) Get as much of the sand out as you can. You can scrape around on the inside with your dowel or a bottle brush.  You can try putting a little water in and swishing it around and then out, but you don’t want to get it to wet. Let dry COMPLETELY.  Shake and brush out even more sand.

9) Dyeing

You can do some dye work or painting when it is completely done, but I have read that if you spill some pitch on it, the dyed surface is easier to clean. Of course, you can get by without doing this at all, but it will last longer and look nicer if your do. I painted my bottle with brown leather dye, and then mink oil to give it a nice finish. You could also use acrylic paints and create a design.

August 1^st:

10) Pitching

When completely dry and as sand-free as you can make it, it is time to pitch it. First, I recommend building a foil or masking tape mouth cap to protect the outer surface from dribbles. Heat your pitch/beeswax mixture in a pan of water. While you hold the bottle, have someone pour in the hot pitch. As quickly as you can, swirl it around the interior and pout out the extra. Let it cool a little, and then repeat. Keep doing this until it feels coated all the way inside. If you feel you have to thick a pool in one area, you can try inverting it in a warm (300 F) oven and hoping the pitch melts out before your bottle over cooks. Very difficult and better just to pour it right the first time. When it feels fully covered, let it cool over night.

11) Testing (which really isn’t a step at all)

Carefully fill the bottle with water, trying not to spill any on the outside of the bottle. I use a funnel.  Let it sit and see if any damp darker spots appear on the outside sides of your bottle---if so, you have an area that isn’t pitched and is wicking the water through. Do any of your seams have drips? These could be caused by a lack of pitch or by holes that are too big, or by leather that has been over cooked and shrunk too much.  If you have any of these problems, you can try letting your bottle dry thoroughly and applying another layer of pitch. This should work for the first two problems, but there is limited help for holes that are too big and leather that is too shrunken.