The Samurai Wallet

Here's a piece I finished in July 2018. It's a gift for a young relative of mine.

I've never done a bifold wallet like this, so I thought I'd give it a whirl.

The decoration is based on this Japanese woodcut print from the 1700s:

Woodcuts are great sources for leather work-- they are full of strong lines.

For comparison, here is the design on the leather (simplified):

This is a rare appearance of Fiebing white dye -- it works here since it matches the antique look (the background is antiqued, using black).

Here's the outside:

Note the unstitched bit at the bottom -- that's deliberate. If I stitched the two pieces right there where the wallet bends, the stitches wear too much.

I nearly got the design too close to the edge! But I squeaked it in.

And the inside:

The card slots need to be cut with precision so they'll stack up over each other and keep a nice straight edge. You can see here where they don't quite match up on the left.

There were a couple problems with getting the lengths to match up. Leather isn't like paper -- it has a thickness which must be accounted for, and if the measurements are short, you have to cut another piece. That can get expensive! I found that I had to trim both edges to get them to match up nicely. It's probably best to design with that in mind, with some excess, and then trim to fit.