Leather Sewing Needles 101
From Fine Leatherworking
https://www.fineleatherworking.com/
Picking the right needle for hand-sewing
leather can be the difference between a 30-minute job and an hour. If your
sewing needles are ill-suited to your work, you will fight through every stitch
on your project. If you pick the right combination of needle and thread, sewing
can be the most relaxing part of your work. Many articles talk about the types
of sewing needles like glovers, lacing, and curved needles, but 95% of the
time, you’ll be using harness needles.
Today, I’ll go over what makes these needles ideal, how to use them, and when
to use different needles.
To clarify, I’ll be discussing hand-sewing
needles today. Machine sewing needles for leather is a whole topic unto itself.
Suit the Needle to the Thread, the Thread to the Needle
The purpose of using needles is to push your
thread through the leather, plain and simple. I often get the question, “What
size needle do I use for leather?” the easy answer is nearly the same size as
your thread. If your thread is 1mm thick, your needles should be a bit less
than 1mm. You don’t want your needles to be much thicker than your thread
because you’ll have a hard time pushing the needle through your stitch holes.
On the back stitch, where there is already a thread in the hole, you’ll have an
even worse time with too thick needles. Your needles shouldn’t be too thin
relative to your thread, either. Overly thin needles will more easily pierce
thicker thread and you’ll have to spend time fixing it.
Some threads are quite loose in their twists;
you can unravel them with little effort. In these cases, I’ll size down the
needle by one because the thread compresses when I pull it through the stitch
holes. Lastly, remember that what passes through the stitch hole isn’t just the
needle; it’s the needle plus the two widths’ worth of thread. This is because
the thread passes through the eye, so it’s a thread on one side, the needle,
and more thread on the other. So, an MBT #8 Polyester thread in a size four
needle has an approximate width of 1.92mm.
Leather Hand-Sewing Needle Chart
What size needle for 1mm thread in leather? 0.8mm? Size 8? Below is a handy chart of needles (John James Harness Needles) , paired with the different threads:
To Be Blunt
If you are hand-sewing leather and
pre-punching your stitch holes or are using an awl while sewing, your holes are
already accounted for. You use blunt or round point needles instead of
sharp-tipped ones. With sharp needles, you can more easily pierce your thread.
You also increase the chance of making new holes. We’ve all been in a situation
where our holes are misaligned, and the needle isn’t going through the leather.
Most new students will try to brute force their way through the hole. If you
use sharp needles, you end up piercing new holes, and your stitch spoils. If
you are using blunt needles, then you are forced to use the right technique:
rotate your needles until you find the holes you already made with your irons
or awl. Blunt tips don’t make new holes, which is critical to making
nice-looking stitches.
Glovers Needles
There are other types of needles for
leatherworking. Many leather crafters rarely use these needles, so I’ll briefly
highlight their uses.
Glover’s needles are called such because
glover’s traditionally used them. The tips are sharp and triangular-shaped, so
they are meant to pierce the leather without tearing a larger hole. Glove
leather is usually soft, thin, and sometimes fur-lined on the inside. I’m not
trained as a glove-maker, but if I were to hand-sew portions of a glove, I’d
probably want a very small stitch hole. I imagine your leather would not be
pre-punched. If it is fur-lined, you’d never find the holes anyway. The small
triangle points would be ideal for this, where you make fine holes in thin
leather. I’ve seen them referenced in older books, like in Al Stohlman’s sewing
book, when using wool-lined leather.
Below is a video link to bending needles for leather
sewing:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TfiEZQF2X514vb72JyKxLYIxyUQvcHpX/view?usp=sharing
