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Easy Project: New Sunglasses case in soft automotive leather.

The tools for the job, just add my Singer 99 sewing machine 

Diane broke her sunglasses a couple of weeks ago. Yesterday she bought a new pair (in the hope of a summer some time this year.)
Her new glasses have no case, so she asked me to make one for her from my pile leather scraps. I have a fair bit of automotive upholstery leather bits and pieces that I picked up at The Gloucester Resource Center's Scrapstore a few weeks back.
Leather needles and a Teflon foot that I ordered for my machine arrived earlier in the week. (I used the standard Singer straight stitch foot for this project). I don't have much of an excuse not to make a case for Diane's sunglasses and put my old Singer 99 machine (and me) to a new test. I was not going to try anything fancy for this project, just a plain slipcase with a flap, simply sewn together. No gluing involved.
First I had to carefully iron out a few kinks and creases in the leather using a medium/hot dry iron and brown paper to avoid scorching. I used a deep shade of burgundy, soft automotive leather for the construction.
I cut out a rough shape for the cover, and flap retainer. I guessed it would be a little too large, and it was. so I adjusted the size with the front clipped to the back with my cheap as chips Chinese "wonder clips" after the first side seam and one end of the flap retainer was in place. I did not use pins as they would leave holes that would always be there.
The second edge was seamed together which also secured the retaining strap in place.
An additional layer of leather was placed on the flap, wrong sides together and stitched across the top of the pouch ensuring that no stitches caught the rim of the pouch. The two layers of the flap were then shaped using my curve ruler, cut with a rotary cutter and self-healing cutter mat before edge stitching in place with a 1/8" seam allowance.
Job done!
I took no time at all to design something simple, cut it out and stitch it together. With a few simple modifications to the overall width and adding an extra layer of leather to the redesigned flap, the design and construction processor took about an hour and a half. (Sewing leather is new to me).



Very Marj Proops


Finished


Finished case, sunglasses on the extension table of my Singer 99. Pot of cheap Chinese Clips used instead of pins 

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