Aika Felt Works Blog: Co-design project - Getting Used to the Materials

A Happy New Year!

After collecting materials for this Co-design project to make original laptop cases, today I want to share my process of getting used to the materials – the leather and zippers.

Here is one of the collected materials, elk leather.

It’s … heavy. And grain is quite rough.

I had forgotten that leather was heavy. How heavy the leather is comparing with light weight of wool felt in the same square measure! Especially this elk leather is thick, and the thickness is probably 2,5 mm.

I was a bit intimidated by seeing the whole shape of the skin, which reminded me the lifetime of the animal, by smelling it as well. I knew it’s just leather, but still I was shocked to face the massiveness of the material. Wow…!

My first impression of the elk leather was that it would be difficult to work with, but I thought I must get used to the material first of all, because this was my first challenge to make product combining zippers, leather and wool felt.

I had some ideas for design, but in my head it’s still unclear about actual process such as how I could handle details, what kind of sewing order I should take.

So I decided to make some models imitating existing products to learn the characteristics of the materials. By this way I shall understand some designer’s design process, including possibilities and limitation of materials at least partly, like “why that form has been created, why that detail had to be like that”.

Then, what I referred was hard graft.

It’s cool!

They say that they have been producing bags with combination of felt and leather already since 2007.

I was discouraged because I thought there was no need of making new design in addition to their super cool bags!

But they don’t have any product using leather INSIDE, as back lining to prevent producing static electricity (which is my main theme in this project). So there is one reason to keep going. I started working.

I took note of 2 kinds of bag among others. One was ALL IN ONE LAPTOP FOLIO in which you can put not only your PC but also books and AC adapter etc from the top, and the other was DOPP KIT which had double zipper opening like a camera and lens bag.

I started cutting the leather with referring these bags timidly.

Zippers that I used here for making models were found materials in my work room so the color and design of zippers will be replaced by original ones from Japan for the final designs.

Photos below are the process of making models. Jump to see more details from the link.

The leather glued with wool felt. Thickness is like this.

Making the top part by sewing a zipper.

Although the zipper is not put on the side of the body in the model that I referred, in my model I continued to sew it on the corner and side too.

Oh, oh, bad work. Stitches were not even because the thickness was too much – this was not good at all.

Still I continued sewing the zippers to the body.

Checking the size if my PC could be fit in, with a paper dummy.

The zipper was closed. The relation between my PC size and patterns were OK.

A corner and a side of the model. Awful!

I took off the stitches on the sides, because of bad result.

Referring to the model, I made the side parts using leather. Then, the leather on the side part must be made up from 2 parts necessarily, with one end being sewn first to the body and the other end being sewn together to close the side part. ...I hope you understand my English ;).