How to Decorate Leatherworks

Video Transcript

"Hi this is Eric Sterns with Expert Village. We're discussing some traditional look style leather work and we're in the process now of going through making a knife sheath. Basically what you can do is as you begin the process of sewing the sheath together as we did previously, if you decide at that point that you're going to want decorative hide on there either for purposes of fringe, bead work or both, you can sew the sheath to it. What one does is simply cut a piece of the deer hide to a shape of a rectangle that can be sewn to the hide. So one basically cuts a, a basic rectangle shape. It doesn't have to be perfect because deer hide like most other hides is notorious for its stretch and give and you know, if it's a little off that actually kind of, I think it kind of adds to its character myself. So and then once it's cut anyway you can look at it and see if you want it maybe a little even a little uneven however you want to do it. You can kind of even it up a little bit and then from here what you would do is as is seen here holes are punched into the top portion of the hide with your tool. Just very simply, very easily like so, no trouble along depending on how many you need as you go. You can mark it on the back side of the deer hide which won't be seen if you're comfortable with that. If not you can easily just estimate the sizing and as you, as you sew your knife sheath together with the raw hide lace you simply include the deer hide on the top portion for the first four or five holes. Then you leave the rest of it unpunched so that it hangs free. That will be the portion like here that we've started to cut into fringe."