Restoring Your Kilim Bag with Leather

A friend of mine asked if I could repair her much loved Kilim Rug Bag. HECK YA!

Apparently the “leather”, which didn’t seem to be real leather (more about that later), was peeling off the backing, and she wasn’t fond of the denim back on the Bag neither.

The hardware, jewellery, lining and the Kilim Rug portions of the Bag were in great shape so it would be an easy fix to to replace the “leather” with real leather I had on hand and make a new leather back for the Bag to replace the denim.

It was easy to take the Bag apart. Well … after I cut off the “leather” as it was glued on in spots too. I had to pry off the existing rivets too. That took a bit of time, but I managed! 🙂

I cut the necessary pieces out of the back of a man’s coat, kindly given to me by a co-worker. The coat was very worn on the inside, but the black leather on the outside was in beautiful shape!

You can easily see the difference between my new leather and the “leather” taken off the Bag. A little bit of research told me that the “leather” was “bonded leather”, made with leather scraps mixed with other materials and attached to a backing. It was destined to breakdown eventually.

I never purchase new leather for bag making. Instead, I prefer to find quality leather clothing second hand, take it apart and repurpose it to give it new life.

I didn’t have any problem at all sewing the Kilim Rug, leather or any other part of this Bag with my Janome HD3000. I added my Walking Foot, a leather needle and heavier weight thread and I was ready to go!

I cut and sewed my new leather back onto the Kilim front and cut and sewed the Tabs for the D-Rings and attached the D-Ring Tabs to the Bag front and back. I then cut, sewed and attached D-Ring Tabs for the cross-body strap and made a new strap from my new leather.

I dropped in and sewed the old lining to the outer Bag and bound the top with new leather binding.

I was done. Clearly the most successful pairing of an old Kilim Rug Bag and an old leather coat – making something new and wonderful! I just loved the jewellery that was on this Kilim Rug Bag and was so happy that all of the originality of this Kilim Rug Bag could be preserved.

Anyone else have a repair project for me? I’d love to take it on!

Happy Sewing! Thank you for reading and commenting!

Stash Busting with this project? Well … This was a repurpose from an old leather coat, so nothing’s changed. Still approximately 117 metres of fabric in the stash!