Renaissance Art

In his special instructions, one of our customers recently asked if we would document the creation of his Laptop Messenger Bag. We were more than happy to oblige. If you have ever wondered the what the life of an order at Renaissance Art is like from start to finish, check out Part II of this three-part installment:

At the end of the last entry, Tommy had just cut the gusset, strap hanger and strap parts and began to skive (a process to split leather in order to make it thinner) sections of the bag pieces to prepare them for assembly. To provide the laptop case with stiffness, the bag needs edging. To fashion it, Tommy measures and cuts a thin piece of skived leather. She marks the placement on the wall of the bag where the edging will go.

She then tapes the wrong side of the piece of edging and carefully folds a quarter of that onto itself.

She then places half of the now folded edging along the long side of the wall. She folds the other half of the edging into the back of the wall. The edging wraps around the raw edge.

In order to keep the edging firmly in place and to create an attractive stitch pattern, Tommy sews the edging along the top and bottom to the wall of the bag.

After finishing the edging, Tommy starts working on the flap pocket. The flap pocket is the piece on the inside of the flap that gives it stiffness. She has to skive the edge and roll it over to provide a nice, finished edge.

Tommy then tapes three edges of the flap pocket and places it firmly on the flap.

Stay tuned for Part III: the Final Build

follow us:

Arthur brought in an entire tray of scones five minutes ago, and they are already nearly gone. He didn’t have any oranges, so he used lemon zest in the batter. Studio opinion: delicious!

follow us:

In his special instructions, one of our customers recently asked if we would document the creation of his Laptop Messenger Bag. We were more than happy to oblige. If you have ever wondered the what the life of an order at Renaissance Art is like from start to finish, check out this three-part installment:

The first step to creating a custom laptop bag is to create a calculations sheet. Tommy, our resident bag lady, takes measurements of the customer’s laptop and plugs them into an Excel database that provides her with the correct dimensions for templates. Once she has the calculations for the templates, she can get started on the bag.

• Look at order and complete a calculation sheet
• Cut templates according to calculation sheet
• Use templates to cut leather
• Click gusset, strap hanger and strap parts
• Put edging on the wall and front gusseted pocket
• Skive, roll and sew the rear pocket
• Attach strap hangers to flap wall and sew
• Attach rear pocket over strap hangers
• Skive one end of gusset
• Attach front gusseted pocket to front wall and sew to gusset
• Attach gusset to extra compartment wall (if applicable)
• Attach second gusset
• Attach two compartments to the flap wall
• Attach the flap pocket to the flap
• Use template to round corners of flap
• Sew around the entire bag
• Sew strap and buckle. Add keeper.
• Process the order, pack and ship the bag to its new owner

If this sounds like Greek to you, follow along with our pictures below.

After printing her calculation sheet, Tommy will select a hide appropriate for the bag. She’s looking for one with few to no blemishes: brands, scars, weak spots. All products crafted from our Rustic Brown leather start out in the hide pile. Our leather is delivered on pallets in this way. We receive the black and Rustic Elegance leathers in rolls, so we keep those in roll piles.

After choosing a hide, Tommy will put it on her work table while she cuts her templates. She uses the ruler on the cutter to size the binders board according to her calculation sheet. The templates she will cut for a Mac bag are flap/wall (the back of the bag and the flap that covers the opening), flap pocket (pocket that is on the inside of the flap–it gives it weight), wall (front piece of the bag, rear pocket, gusset (the thinner piece of leather that connects the wall to the flap/wall), strap hangers (this part attaches the strap to the bag) and gusseted pocket (a three-dimensional pocket). We have to cut templates to size from binders board for all our custom items.

Once she cuts her templates, Tommy picks perfect sections of the hide to make the pieces of the bag. She uses the templates to cut each piece precisely. If we have dies for the piece, Tommy has to use our “clicker” (a big industrial machine that uses metal dies to cut pieces out of leather) to cut the gusset, strap hanger and strap parts.

After cutting the pieces, Tommy has to skive the leather (shave it to an appropriate thickness) so that she can fold a small section over to create a smooth edge. This skiver is set to 1/4 in. width. Tommy is skiving the wall in this picture.

Stay tuned for more soon…and, if you haven’t heard, it’s March Bag Madness. Look for our Basic Essential Satchel on sale this week and Custom Laptop and Mac Bags at the end of the month.

It may look ordinary, but it’s not your great grandmother’s sewing machine. This Adler 205-320 Cylinder Arm Saddle is the Big Daddy of three sewing machines we use – and there’s a reason we use it 98% of the time. With a triple feed mechanism and a maximum stitch length of 1/4 inch, it’s the real workhorse of the studio.

We purchased this Adler about five years ago when Arthur’s Mountainsmith cordura fanny pack broke. When he couldn’t find a suitable replacement, we decided to just get our own sewing machine and start making our own bags (sound familiar?). We also use the machine to sew up all of our book covers, bags, moleskine products, menus and some custom products. (NOTE: All of our journals are HAND STITCHED with needles and thread.)

The advantage of this heavy-duty machine is that it guarantees maximum durability and a solid aesthetic. The heavy thread we use gives our products a hand-sewn look and superior strength. The triple feed mechanism sews any material that goes through here in three different ways to ensure an even stitch length and that there is no slipping.

In the title picture, you can see the large flywheel on the right. This is where the motor connects to the machine by means of a belt, much like the fan belt in your car. Weighing 10 pounds, the flywheel gives plenty of momentum to provide smooth stitching when the needle travels through multiple layers (up to 1 inch) of leather. The handle just to the left of the flywheel controls forward and reverse. All the way to the left is where the needle is housed, and the pressure foot is raised and lowered by the handle on the top left. But we have a pedal on the floor for that also.

As you can see in this next photo (click the thumbnail for a bigger version), the needle and bobbin are huge. The needle has twice the diameter of a paper clip and is almost as long as a Bic lighter. The bobbin has a one-inch diameter and is housed in the shuttle for sewing.

For all those home sewers who frequently poke their finger on their home machine, this is not a needle to get close to. At a top speed of 600 stitches per minute it will effortlessly sew right through your bone. Arthur, Kristel, LaShanda and Allin all work on this machine, and they can all attest to how carefully they use it in order to save their fingers.

In this next photo, you can see the machine and how the cylinder arm hangs over the table. This helps when sewing bags because the bulk of the bag hangs over the table as you stitch the edge. Those two spools of thread on the top right? They are two pounds each. One is for the machine and the other for winding bobbins.

This next picture is of the shuttle assembly. This is where the bobbin thread and the top thread get all tied together and make the stitch. Various screws and dials here and on the machine control how tight the stitch gets. It’s good to mention now that there are about 24 places to oil this machine, all of which gets oiled once a week. The shuttle itself gets a drop of oil every 2 or 3 bobbins - on average, we go through about 6 or 7 bobbins daily. When working on a large order for menus or binders or a large custom order, we can go through 30 bobbins in a single day. Granted, they do not hold much because of the heavy thread we use - one bobbin can sew 3-1/2 to 4 shoulder straps for a bag before it runs out.

We do require our people to train on this machine extensively before using it for production. How? By having them make leather coasters. By sewing two pieces of square leather, they learn how to sew straight, use the guide, how to start, stop and control the machine as well as mastering how to do nice, neat corners. Afterwards, they can put a stiff drink on the coaster (that they get to keep, of course) and celebrate keeping all of their fingers.

Next time you look at the large stitches on our products, think of Big Daddy, and pray we don’t stick our fingers!

P.S. Happy Easter, everyone!

Many people write to us wondering what happens to the scraps of leather that are left over after we make a journal. Good question. We do end up with quite a few orphaned pieces of leather that are either too small, oddly shaped, and are just not suitable for products for public consumption.

Now there’s always the Charlie Chaplin method of disposing (or digesting?) leather, but some of our staff have come up with ingenious ways of using leather scraps to create some unique objects. We’re excited to show them to you on our blog and think you’ll agree that they’re much better alternatives to chowing down on hide and chasing it with some Pepto.

(But then again, this raises the question - are our journals good enough to eat?)

This week, we present Larry and his creation, a leather pillow. You would hardly know that this was made from scraps. (Click on the thumbnails for larger pics!)