I repaired a leather handbag strap (kind of)

Last year my friend Marissa gave me this All Saints cross-body bag she wasn’t using anymore. Literally so nice. Since then I have worn it so much the seam on the strap tore. I was sad. My first instinct was to run out and buy a new bag but this bag was in perfect shape otherwise. So I thought I’d try and fix it. Let me be clear and say I do not know how to fix things. It’s going to be an adventure.

I did a little research (and I do mean a little) and bought some supplies. The hope is I will continue this trend and fix other things. Adventures everywhere!

Supplies
• leather glue
• leather embossing/spacer set
• leather sewing awl
• leather sewing needle and thread

I started by trimming the exposed area of frayed string and fabric. The strap is double sided and had stretched on one side therefore the open seam didn’t meet anymore without making the together side buckle. So I couldn’t just stitch the split edges together. This would have been a lot easier if I could have. I opted to cut both straps to make them the same size. Not sure if that was the right thing to do but I made an executive decision. Then I scored the leather with the embossing spacer at about 1/4’ from the edges. Am I making it sound like it wasn’t a complete struggle for me? Good.

Cutting strings, embossing and sewing awling.

After that, I punctured holes in the leather with a sewing awl along the embossing line for the needle to easily pass through. BTW, it was still hard. I glued the edges together with the leather glue and hand sewed in a criss-cross fashion and reinforced the edges. I wish I was better at that!

Looks like Sally from “The Nightmare Before Christmas” sewed that.

Sew, if you look at it from a distance and squint, it looks fine! But seriously, I am a very tactile learner and doing this has made me braver to try and fix other things. I’ll keep reading and watching videos and maybe someday I’ll do better. Or maybe when this seam rips again, as I’m sure it will, I will bring it to a cobbler like a normal person. Either way my All Saints hand-me-down bag lives another day and I have one less thing to recycle!