Hello from Cheshire

Hello. My name is David. I got into leatherwork entirely by accident just over 4 years ago.

My wife commuted to London a couple of days a week at the time, and was looking for a bag to carry her laptop and vast amounts of paperwork backwards and forwards on the train.

She had been using a designer open-top tote bag and wanted something similar but with a flap over the top. She couldn't find anything she liked, so after a bit of searching on YouTube (Ian Atkinson and Nigel Armitage mostly) I volunteered to make her one.

I made a quick trip to Abbey in Knutsford and spent a day with Nigel in his front room in Burton-on-Trent (you were allowed to do that sort of thing in those days) to get me started, and a couple of weeks later I had finished my first bag :-)

...and that may well have been the end of it. I hadn't invested much in tools at this point:, and whilst I'd enjoyed making it I didn't really think I'd make another one.

However a few weeks later, my wife went to visit an old friend (Rita) who owned a up-market ladies fashion shop and happened to have the bag with her. Rita went in to raptures when she saw the bag demanding to know where she got it from, and was very surprised to discover that I'd made it. She asked me to make another one for her shop.

So here is my second bag:

I went on to make and sell a dozen or so; but to be honest, despite the initial excitement of having people prepared to pay for these bags that I had designed and made - it soon became a bit of a drudge. That might sound very ungrateful. I was earning decent money, but I found the repetitive nature of it rather soul destroying. I was a one trick pony, my kitchen table had become a sweat-shop and my fingers were bleeding quite a lot. The race to fulfil orders had taken the pleasure out of it - so I stopped altogether. This was to the great delight of my neighbours who were not at all happy about the banging!

Roll on 3 years and I've got the bug again. I've signed up for Philip's course so that I can expand my skills and horizons and experiment with new ideas and materials purely for my own pleasure. I have a passion for motorcycles and aim to be making motorcycle luggage and accoutrements to an unnecessarily fine standard.

Thus far I've been blown away by Philip's content and style. A couple of days in and the investment has been worth it!

Well, that's me; and I'm looking forward to being part of this group

warm regards

David