Original Vintage & Restored Leather Keyrings for Classic Cars & Motorcycles

The Hand Stitching

Sewing Machine? What Sewing Machine?

Customers often assume that we use a sewing machine for stitching the leather keyfobs……………

We have tried a couple of old saddlery stitching machines which didn’t do the job very well at all.

We then tried a machine which is produced to imitate the appearance of hand stitching – this didn’t work very well either .

We have slowly come to realise that what we do best is hand stitching.

The quality of hand stitching which we achieve is one of the things that our leather keyrings are known for . All of our leather keyfobs are individually handstitched .

The stitching is carried out entirely by hand with the leather keyfob clamped firmly in the wooden jaws of an antique sewing horse held between the stitcher’s knees. The position of the stitches has already been marked out and the perforations for the needles are made in the leather by hand with a diamond bladed stitcher’s awl.

Two needles are then used simultaneously to produce a locked saddle stitch .The thread used is linen thread which is lubricated with beeswax to facilitate the stitching process. Stitching tension is under the complete control of the person doing the stitching.

Machine stitched leather will almost always carry the witness mark of the machine’s walking foot – this is the mechanical serrated ‘foot’ which engages with the leather and moves the workpiece along as stitching progresses. You will not notice that mark on our leather keyfobs. Finally our hand stitching is finished off with a couple of back stitches which you will see – if you look carefully – usually at the top left hand side of the leather keyfob .