Volume LXVIIII No. 3 0045-5121

May, June, July, August – 2021

Download PDF:  Canadian-Leathercrafter-M-J-J-A-2021.pdf

The dedicated Leather Crafter from the CSCL Photo Archives

Note from the Editor….

The Newsletter “Canadian Leathercraft” is your source of information about CSCL and its members. Also check out the CSCL website at www.canadianleathercraft.org and CSCL’s Facebook page.

I am always looking for articles for the Newsletter, do you have a project that you have done that you think everyone would be interested in seeing, we are looking for articles?

Highlights from the Past Executive Council Meetings….

The Executive was busy finalizing the 70^th – 71^st Annual that was being held on Zoom on May 8th. This Zoom Annual went very well and we were able to stay within the planed time of two hours. We would like to thank Stanley Major from Sea Leather Wear for his demonstration on the use of Fish Skin Leather and the various ideas that Fish Skin Leather can be used for. Visit him on the internet at Sea Leather Wear.

Please see the last page of the Newsletter for links to pictures of the items that were judge for this Annual.

We held an Executive meeting the end of May to wrap up any outstanding business before we broke for June, July and August. Our next Executive meeting will be held in September.

CSCL Membership

Have you paid your membership? It’s a new Membership Year (April 1 to March 31).

• If you are joining trough a branch pay your CSCL membership to the Branch Treasurer along with your branch membership fee.
• if you are joining as a Member-at-Large or Sustaining Member send your membership payment to the CSCL Treasurer: Della Chynoweth, 3350 Monck Road, Norland, Ontario K0M 2L0 or you can e-transfer to [email protected]. Please be sure to include your contact information.

CSCL Larmour Lending Library

The CSCL lending Library of Books and Patterns can be referenced on our web site www.canadianleathercraft.org. Head to Gallery and click on CSCL Library of Books and Patterns. Under the Patter option there is 80 pages of patterns that may give you ideas of things to make. Under the Book section there is 13 pages of titles of Books and DVD’s about Leather crafting, design and colour. Remember these patterns and books are there for you to borrow from the library. Select item(s) you would like to borrow and send your list to Paul Kitchener at [email protected].

Branch Presidents will assist in pickup and delivery of the orders from branch members.

Members-at-large may order directly from Paul and arrange shipping or printing options, fees may apply.

Memberships are due by March 31^st

70^th – 71^st Annual Convention

Meet your Executive for 2021 – 2023

Executive

Past President Jim Wilkes

President Lauch Harrison

1st Vice President Jim Wilkes

Secretary Lauren Malec

Treasurer Della Chynoweth

Branch Presidents

Hamilton Sean Dalgetty

Mississauga Jim Wilkes

Norland Tracey Howard

MAL Appointee Lauren Malec

Ex-Officio

Chairman – Council of Fellows Sean Dalgetty

Teaching Standards Lauch Harrison

Editor – Canadian Leathercraft Barbara Chynoweth

Membership Kim Winchester

Librarian Paul Kitchener

Privacy Officer Lauch Harrison

Electronic Communications Officer Eugene Pik

Special Committees

Workshops Lauch Harrison, Jim Wilkes

President’s Message from the Annual – Lauch Harrison FCSCL

Welcome to the Virtual Annual General Meeting. What great changes the last year and a half has brought to our Leather Working Society and Canadian Society. The time has gone by alternating from very quickly to a dead stop.

Without our normal milestones it seems so little time has past since we met last in Norland. The extended period of inactivity has not served us well and if I use my own experience, I did not spend much time with leatherwork.

The Society continues to shrink, but we will continue for our members until our funds are gone. Our ability to pass along the craft to a new generation has been usurped by the internet and the myriad sites with information, patterns, videos and chat rooms that are free and easy to use. Our challenge is finding ways to remain vital, offering workshops is one avenue. Two years have past and one workshops was developed or given. We can’t sustain interest in the Society unless we can draw outside interest for two reasons; income and introducing the Society to potential members.

The Fellows of the Society judged the First Virtual Annual Competition from photographs and I congratulate them on the effort and thank them for the time spent.

I hope this is not the only way to present our craft for others to see. I hope we will gather, do workshops, demonstrations and have some real Annuals in the coming years.

A Kodak Moment 

“. . . a rare, one time, moment that is captured by a picture or should have been captured by a picture.” 

The 2020 Tokyo Olympics brought many Kodak moments and during this year’s CSCL summer break one MAL captured her camera too, and in leather.

Looking ahead to the 2021-23 term, our newly elected Secretary shares this week’s photo of her scratch pad sketch of her childhood Instamatic X-15.  This sketch, including that fiddly flash cube, was transferred to a 4 oz piece of recycled cowhide leather which was last summer’s custom leather mouse pad project. All of these steps afforded her the fun opportunity to practise the use of a swivel knife at little cost.

What was your Summer ’21 Kodak moment in leathercraft?

Bevel Knife Skiving

Check out this You Tube video of Lauch Harrison talking about Bevel Knife Skiving.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqFU1uxroKo

Making a Bevel Skiving Knife out of a scraper

Making a Bevel Skiving Knife out of a Richard stiff scraper. this video shows the steps of annealing, profiling, hardening, tempering, grinding, honing and stropping the scraper into a knife for skiving leather. thanks for watching

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXN5k6UKx5g

New Leather?

The following is compiled from various articles I found on the Internet about New Leather, but I did not see any New Leather that could be carved.

Creating a leather alternative that could replace animal leather has been a goal for research labs and companies all across the world.

Over centuries, leather has become a crucial part of our society. Thanks to its abundance and properties, it is a perfect material to be used in various fields, from fashion to automotive industry.

Unfortunately, leather is as unsustainable as useful…

With the growing environmental crisis and the shift of the population towards more plant-based lifestyle, finding a sustainable replacement for animal leather is crucial.

What Is Vegan Leather, Anyway?

Vegan leather may sound like an oxymoron because, well, it is an oxymoron. So what even is vegan leather — besides being an ethical, sustainable, and cruelty-free alternative to traditional leather!? Well, as you probably already suspected: It isn’t leather at all!

Vegan leather has a couple of different names — you may have heard of “artificial leather” or “synthetic leather” — all of which describe more or less what it is: An alternative to leather that looks like traditional leather, but doesn’t use any animal products.

Most vegan leather is made using polyvinyl chloride or polyurethane, both of which are plastic-based materials (hence the popular, albeit maybe dated, portmanteau “pleather,” which originally stood for “plastic leather”). And while we’re well aware of our planet’s plastic problem, “pleather” is still the more sustainable and ethical option when it comes to handbags, belts, wallets, shoes, and anything else you’d typically find using leather.

As Green Matters has reported countless times, experts agree that eliminating or cutting back on one’s consumption of animal products — yes, leather and hides included — is the single best thing an individual could do to help the planet. As researcher Joseph Poore put it, “A vegan diet is probably the single biggest way to reduce your impact on planet Earth, not just greenhouse gases, but global acidification, eutrophication, land use, and water use. It is far bigger than cutting down on your flights or buying an electric car.”

And switching to vegan leather is a change that the world has thankfully embraced. According to a recent report by consulting group Grand View Research, the world market for vegan leather is estimated to be worth $85 billion by 2025, LiveKindly reported.

Cactus Leather Is the Newest Eco-Friendly Fabric

a new brand out of Mexico called Desserto is shaking things up by turning nopal cactus leaves into organic, all-natural, cruelty-free leather. Desserto is the first cactus-based leather on the market, and the material has the potential to make the vegan leather industry much more sustainable.

As reported by Fashion United, Desserto’s cactus leather is organic, partially biodegradable, soft, durable, and high enough quality that it can be used to make clothing, accessories, furniture, and even car interiors. “After two years of research and development, we managed to produce a suitable material that complies with the features and technical/mechanical specifications required by those industries that use animal or synthetic leather,” co-founder and vice president Adrián López Velarde told Fashion United in an interview.

Cereal Crop Leather by Will’s Vegan Store

Will’s Vegan Store is an online store that makes luxurious vegan leather shoes from cereal crops.

As Will Green, founder of Will’s Vegan Store tells Green Matters in an email, the company’s vegan leather is made from a mix of polyurethane and bio oil. The bio oil is sourced from cereal crops that were organically grown in northern Europe in a carbon neutral process.

The company is trying to move away from using polyurethane to make its vegan leather, and recently rolled out a new product using viscose made from eucalyptus bark.

“I am working closely with the Italian producer of this material and hope to push the percentage of bio oil we are using even higher through further development,” Green tells Green Matters.

Pineapple Leather by Piñatex

Dr. Carmen Hijosa was once a leather expert — but in the 1990s, she discovered the high environmental impact of the leather industry, and set out to find a better solution than PVC. After years of research, she invented Piñatex, a natural vegan leather made from pineapple leaves. The leaves are a byproduct of existing pineapple harvest, keeping the environmental impact of the material lower than both PVC and leather.

Hijosa founded the company Ananas Anam to sell Piñatex, and fashion brands, designers, and students can order sheets of Piñatex fabric through Ananas Anam’s website. The company does not directly sell any goods made from pineapple leather, but you can buy shoes, purses, and other items made from Piñatex from companies including Nae Vegan Shoes, Hozen, HFS Collective, and Hugo Boss.

According to the company’s FAQ page, Piñatex is made of natural fibres and polylactic acid fibres (PLA), which are biodegradable. However, Piñatex is coated with a petroleum-based resin, meaning the material not biodegradable — yet. Ananas Anam is working on a bio-based coating that will hopefully make Piñatex biodegradable in the future.

Cactus Leather by Desserto

New company Desserto debuted its vegan cactus leather at the International Leather Fair Lineapelle 2019 in Milan last year, followed by the RawAssembly sustainable materials show in Australia, where it was the most-buzzed about product at the entire event, according to Vogue Australia.

Desserto vegan leather is made from nopal cactus leaves, and it is organic, “partially biodegradable,” soft, and durable — so durable that it can be used to make furniture and car interiors in addition to fashion items like wallets, purses, and shoes.

The nopal cactus grows in abundance across Mexico without requiring any water, making it a low-impact crop.

Corn Leather by Veja

French footwear brand Veja is known for its sustainability efforts and for offering a variety of vegan sneaker styles. In early 2019, Veja kicked things up a notch by unveiling a vegan leather material derived from corn, which the brand used to make a new line of shoes called Campo, as LiveKindly reported. The corn leather material is a waxed canvas, coated with resin from the corn waste industry that looks and feels similar to leather.

One year after launching corn leather, it looks like the Campo line is now made from animal-based leather — but several of the sneakers in Veja’s vegan line are still made with corn leather, as well as organic cotton, recycled polyester, and natural rubber.

Flower Leather by Fleather

India-based company Kanpur Flower Cycling makes three innovative products out of leftover temple flowers. The company started out by making Phool, incense sticks from leftover temple flowers; then, Florafoam, a biodegradable alternative to Styrofoam; and now, Fleather, a plant-based leather.

According to the company’s website, the founders came up with the idea to repurpose temple flowers when they noticed the dyes, chemicals, and pesticides seeping from the flowers and into the river after people set them to float away on the water.

As reported by Verve, after a few years of making the incense sticks, founder Ankit Agarwal and research scientist Saumya Srivastava discovered a a “thick fibrous” leather-like material growing on the flower fibers. After some research and development, they were able to turn it into Fleather.

To make Fleather, the company first collects flowers from temples. The petals are then sorted (and any plastic wrappings etc. are removed), and after a little magic (the process is a trade secret, Agarwal told The Times of India) and three weeks of waiting, Fleather is formed, according to Verve.

Even though it’s not on the market yet, Fleather has already won a UN Sustainability Award and a PETA India award for Best Innovation in Fashion. The team hopes to start manufacturing Fleather in April — and they are already in touch with three global luxury fashion brands who are interested in using the material to create vegan handbags.

Apple Peel Leather by Veerah

In 2017, high-end vegan shoe company Veerah took its footwear to the next level by rolling out leather made from 50 percent apple peels leftover from the apple juice industry, and 50 percent polyurethane.

As explained on Veerah’s website, the apple peels, which would have otherwise been waste, are harvested from an orchard in Northern Italy. The peels are dried and ground into a fine powder, which is then mixed with non-toxic pigment and polyurethane to become leather-like fabric. The company also uses other low-impact materials to make its shoes, including algae and recycled plastic.

The three pairs of heels in the company’s Veerah Appeel collection are all made with the apple peel leather. The company is also known for selling matching attachable accessories that can jazz up its heels, such as tassels, brooches, and bows.

Bible Cover – by Jim Wilkes The first two pictures is of the original I made about 20 years ago and he is still using. This was when he was a Canon in the Anglican Church. The other two photos are of the cover I have just finished as he is now a Bishop in Manitoba.

Online Workshop

This is the cardholder/change purse that Jim made from Eleana Workshop. She is on FaceBook and has video’s on You Tube that you can watch. This is from /How to Make a Pocket Size LEATHER Wallet.

^{From the October-November 1974 “Make It With Leather” Magazine}

Can be made as Christmas Tree Ornaments for your tree.

Results from the Annual Convention

Canadian Society for Creative Leathercraft (CSCL) 2021 Annual Competition Awards and Ribbons