leather pillow!

Ever tried sewing upholstery-weight leather on a home sewing machine? Not fun!! Hint: the special leather needles are not optional.

Below: my new leather throw pillow for the couch! This project made me very cranky.

Leather from Global Leathers, recommended by dear friend Robin Jendryaszek.

 The original design was going be have a 4-square patchwork design with topstitching, but it soon became clear that my dear Singer was not going to go through 4 layers of this insanely thick leather.

Side A: 3 panels of leather with 1/4" (ish) topstitching next to each seam. They're all random widths because I had an oddly sized scrap of leather to work with after realizing that my original design wasn't workable.

Side B: single square of leather with 1/4" double topstitching. Much nicer-looking!

I have one more 18" throw pillow to make a cover for. The plan is to make a black leather pillow based on the design of this Alexander McQueen dress that Rob and I saw at the Met last summer. I still have some scraps of the (much lighter-weight) leather that I used for the details on Rob's coat, but not enough for a pillow, so that project will have to wait a while.