Hand Stitched Leather Cell Phone Wallet

I posted a few days ago about my Christmas gift from my husband 

(a hand stitched molded leather handbag) 

You can see that post HERE...

We've been talking about trying out all sorts of hand stitched leather goods...so this is our first attempt at a leather cell phone wallet....

We started by drawing out a pattern (not shown) on tag board.  Traced those onto leather tooling hide and cut the leather pieces out.  

Next you use a tool to pierce the stitching holes and then dye the leather.

I also stamped our "V" into the leather before I dyed it. And you can see how this all goes together....

This all gets hand stitched...(more on that in another post!) with waxed linen thread.

Here the wallet is flat and ready to be molded...

The wallet gets thoroughly soaked in water which makes it extremely soft and pliable....

Then our wooden cell phone mold is pushed into the wallet to create the shape of the phone in the leather itself.

This is left to dry overnight.....

Which creates the shape hardened into the leather itself....pretty cool stuff....

There are still some kinks we're working out but this one turned out pretty good....

We used the dimensions for the iPhone 4 &5 so either should fit.....

I just have a basic trac phone which is a little thicker but still fits fine along with a few cards in the card slot....

Fun stuff!  

next on the list is a simple wallet...