Introduction: Leather Patchwork Table Runner

By Pacific Empire

This leather table runner is made by using contact adhesive to stick pieces of leather onto denim backing from a pair of old jeans before stitching the pieces down.

This is a reasonably basic sewing project but I am assuming you know how to work a sewing machine - zig-zag stitch, back-tacking at the start/end of stitching, etc.

Step 1: ​Materials

Materials:

  • A bunch of leather scraps (you'll need more than you think)
  • Denim recycled from a pair of jeans
  • Extra-strong sewing thread

Standard Sewing Equipment:

    • Sewing machine
    • Leather or Jeans sewing needle
    • Fabric shears
    • Thread snips
    • Rotary cutter and cutting mat
    • Iron and ironing board
    • Ruler
    • Chalk or fabric pen

    Make sure you have strong thread and a strong needle - you can get a leather needle, but I found a jeans needle works just as well. The jeans needle makes a round hole, the leather needle makes a diamond-shaped cut which closes up better if you unpick the stitch.

    Step 2: ​Prepare Materials

    Cut and iron the denim

    I used most of the leg of a large pair of non-stretchy jeans as the backing material for the table runner. You could use other heavy fabric like cotton canvas - any material which doesn't distort or stretch as you work with it.

    I cut the denim into a rough rectangle and ironed it to remove wrinkles and make it flat. You will lose some material around the edges in the final trimming stage, so be generous with your starting material.

    Flatten the leather

    Chances are your leather was stored crumpled up in a bag and is all wrinkled. You can iron the rough side of the leather on low-medium heat to flatten it out. Some people suggest ironing through a paper bag; I had an iron cover which did the same job.

    While the leather is still hot, put a nice heavy textbook on top and leave it for a few minutes to set the leather flat. Stack up the flat pieces neatly so they'll stay unwrinkled.

    Leather comes in a range of thicknesses. You'll probably want to choose pieces which are of reasonably similar thickness.

    Step 3: Begin Construction

    Choose some foundation pieces and cut them so they'll fit together. You can cut straight lines, curved lines, or a mix. The challenging part is accurately cutting matching pieces and adjusting for the tendency of the leather to curve away from your blade.

    For some shapes, I made paper templates by tracing the surrounding leather pieces onto paper, then used the template to cut a matching piece of leather to fit in the space.

    I used spray-on contact adhesive to temporarily stick the leather pieces to the denim. Lay down some newspaper to absorb over-spray and let the adhesive dry for a minute or two until tacky. Then stick the leather onto the denim where you want it to be. The bond is temporary, a bit like the glue on Post-it notes, so if the piece doesn't fit nicely you can remove it, trim it, and try again.

    The leather is slightly flexible and it is tempting to push or pull the leather pieces to make them fit together closely. You can do this a little bit to close up gaps, but don't overdo it as this produces a distortion in the finished piece. Try to get the pieces matching closely while they are flat. The zig-zag stitching hides small gaps anyway.

    Step 4: Start Sewing

    Once you've got some pieces cut and stuck down onto your denim, you can start sewing. I used a leather needle and a jeans needle to sew a zig-zag stitch to sew along the matched edges of the leather pieces. It takes a bit of practise to follow curved seams smoothly. Make sure you back-tack a few stitches at the start and end of your stitches. If you do this by hand you can usually persuade the needle to go into the same holes as the first lot of stitches and it looks very tidy.

    Once the main seams have been sewn down, you can cut and glue down more pieces of leather, and sew them on. Proceed in this way until your backing is completely covered with leather pieces. If you tried to glue all the pieces down first, I think some pieces would start to peel off during the sewing stage.

    You can get creative with patterns of colour and shapes, or go for a pseudo-random pattern like mine. I tried to make sure no two adjoining pieces were the same colour, and the different colours were spread evenly across the table runner.

    Tip: Make sure you use extra-strong sewing thread. Sew some test pieces to check that the tension is correct - I needed to turn the tension way, way down to avoid skipped zig-zags.

    Step 5: Trimming and Flattening

    Once your backing is completely covered and all the leather pieces are stitched down, you can trim the edges straight (or into any shape you like, such as a circle). I did this with a ruler, a rotary cutter and a cutting mat - the cutting mat has a measurement grid which makes it easy to get the edges square to each other. Then you can bind the edges with more zig-zag stitches.

    You'll probably need to flatten the table runner. Iron the whole table runner on the denim side with a hot iron. Quickly lay it flat on a table and put some textbooks on top, with extra weights on the books. Leave it like this for an hour or so. This stretches and flattens any leather pieces that aren't laying flat.

    Step 6: ​Final Thoughts

    Aside from some time spent figuring out that my thread tension needed to be very low, this was a reasonably straight-forward sewing project. There are many interesting patterns and shapes you could get creative with. You could even lay out pieces to form pictures, similar to Marquetry.