Design Your Own Leatherwork. Avoid These 6 Mistakes Now!

Creating Unique Leatherwork: Design Mistakes And How To Avoid Them (Without Losing Your Sanity)

Patterns for bags, wallets, and accessories are incredibly popular — and for good reason. They let you skip the mental gymnastics of designing something from scratch, so you can enjoy the meditative joy of cutting, stitching, and convincing your pricking irons not to misbehave.

But eventually, nearly every leatherworker gets “the itch.”

You start thinking:“What if I just changed this flap shape?” “What if I made a slimmer version?” “What if I design my own bag entirely from scratch because I am clearly a genius?”

And then reality hits.

Designing your own work can feel intimidating — especially when leather is expensive and time is finite. Wasted material hurts both the wallet and the soul.

So in this post, I want to show you how to move from following designs to creating them — without the stress, the panic, or the existential crisis.

(Well… maybe just a small crisis. But we’ll manage that together.)

Here's what to avoid:

1. Not Setting Your Intentions

Before you draw anything, you want to create a build plan. This isn’t school homework — it’s future-you preventing chaos.

It's a good idea at this point to start putting pen to paper and writing down your ideas. It's a bit like a business plan, but without the lies.

Think about:

• What are you making?

• What’s different about your design?

• What leather(s) will you use?

• Will there be hardware?

• How will it be used?

• Who is it for?

• What inspired this idea?

This is your design compass. Without it, you’re basically in the woods, blindfolded, with a saddlers awl.

2. Trying To Draw Perfect Sketches

Your first sketches are not art. They are thought burps — messy, blurry, chaotic, did I mention messy?

And that’s exactly what they should be.

Don’t reach for a ruler. Don’t aim for straight lines. Don’t try to prove you could have gone to architecture school.

You’re simply getting the idea out of your head and onto paper so you can see it.

Cross things out. Draw over the top. Start new pages. Keep the ugly ones — they show your design evolving.

Once your sketches stop looking like abstract cave paintings, then you can introduce measurements and more accurate drawings of the finished article. Not before.

3. Trying To Reinvent The Wheel

One of the fastest routes to disaster is changing too many things at once.

For example, if you change the shape of a gusset on a bag that worked previously, but you also change the type of leather and the thickness of the leather.

Congratulations, you’ve invented The Bag That Won’t Assemble™.

Instead: Change one variable at a time.

This way:

• If it works → you know why.

• If it doesn’t → you also know why.

  
  

Clarity = progress. Chaos = the drawer of unfinished projects (we all have one, don’t pretend).

4. Avoiding Prototypes (Yes, I know 'you got this')

Prototyping is not just about making a practice version. It’s about catching mistakes before they cost you real leather. Save the good stiff until you know it works.

Think of it like testing a parachute using a parking enforcement officer instead of yourself.

Great prototyping materials:

• Craft foam (the hero nobody talks about)

• Gasket paper

• Bonded leatherboard

• Thick canvas stiffened with PVA glue

Choose something that behaves similarly to the leather you plan to use:

• Structured designs → firm prototype material

• Soft, flexible designs → soft, flexible prototype material

Your prototype will never perfectly replicate the final piece — and that’s fine. Its job is to reveal major design problems early, and allow you to hold a 3D version in your hands.

5. Not Keeping It Simple

Everyone wants to design their magnum opus masterpiece right away. But complexity multiplies mistakes.

It’s like cooking. The first time you try to make a signature dish, you don’t start with soufflé. You start with… an omelet. Master the basics before adding truffle foam reductions and edible glitter (please don’t).

Beginner designers whose personality falls on the creative side, tend to gravitate towards the overly complex project, and often it shows in the end result.

6. Avoiding Failure At All Costs

This will upset the perfectionists, but, You will mess up. You will redo things.You will question your abilities, your ideas, and possibly your life choices. This is not a bug — it’s the entire point.

Good design is built on learning what doesn’t work. Every “failed” sketch, prototype, or mis-measured panel is simply data.

If you aren't failing sometimes, you aren’t trying anything new you aren't operating at your full potential.

Unless you are making a single card holder from two pieces of leather stitched together, it’s important to become friends with failure.

Then again, here's a pic of my very first card holder:

Final Thoughts

Designing your own leatherwork is less about having “natural creativity” and more about:

• Asking the right questions

• Making rough sketches (lots of them)

• Testing ideas cheaply

• Changing one variable at a time

• Keeping it simple as you learn

• Accepting failure as part of the journey

If you stick with it, you’ll look back months from now and see that you’ve developed your own design language — something distinctly yours.

And that’s worth every prototype, every scrap piece, and every “why is this gusset doing this to me?” moment.

And for those of you who want to access my 7 step design blueprint, the video course 'How To Design. From Concept To Creation' was made just for you.

Available with any Video Plan here at the Leathercraft Masterclass.

Here's a preview of the course: