Pouch #1000, and Related Natter

Here you go, as promised, a picture of Pouch #1000:

We forgot to get a picture at home, but remembered Friday morning before it got busy, and the camera on Ron's iPad is pretty good.  Good thing we remembered Friday morning, it sold Friday afternoon.

Underneath the leaves, #1000 is a fairly standard large hard square pouch, which is somewhere in the neighborhood of 8" wide, 9" tall, and 2" thick, with the flap lengthened an inch or an inch and a half (I forgot to make a note of how much). It fastens with a magnetic clasp.  The new price for a basic large square hard pouch is $62.50, we got $75 for this one. I was worried it was too expensive, apparently not. 

The back/flap was dyed golden brown, and laced with lace about the same color - I decided it needed to look finished under the leaves. The body was also dyed the same brown, before waxing, which results in a really nice color after waxing. Dark brown lace on the body.  Ron cut the leaves out of various autumn-ish shades of garment and upholstery leather using the Sizzix papercrafting machine and cutting dies we got a couple-few years ago. There are three different leaf shapes, but I mostly used the two with better coverage.

I'd originally planned to rivet each leaf on, but Ron talked me into (machine) sewing them on instead, which was a good call. There's one leaf near the edge flap strategically located (and sewn) to hide the boring side of the clasp, where it fastens to the outside of the flap. Then I sewed leaves down in curving rows, with added fun sneaking a couple rows in when I realized I didn't have sufficient coverage to hide the earlier lines of stitching in spots. The last row, of just for strategically-placed leaves, is held on with rivets. 

I'd been meaning to make a pouch with leaves for quite a while - since about the time we got the cutting dies - and pouch #1000 finally supplied the necessary Round Tuit. I'd originally planned also doing one in spring colors, and maybe winter. I'll probably do a spring next, although I think there's enough autumn-colored leaves for another one. Spring would be with leaves in shades of green, and maybe some yellow. I'd probably do the same gold dye and gold lace on the flap, although I do also have green lace. For the body I'd skip the dye, so it would come out a lighter color.

For a winter I'd probably do white and blues for the leaves, not sure on a brown body or on black.

We've also got cutting dies for gears, so I'll probably do a steampunk-ish pouch soon. I've got metallic copper leather, as well as some metallic puple-ish leather Robin says is bronze for the gears. Not sure if I want to put them on a dark brown or on a black pouch - I think they'd stand out better on black. I can also put antique brass rivets at the centers of the gears, if they'd look right. My plan is to sew the gears down with the lightweight sewing machine.