Late Night Sewing - Leather Pouches

I made this little pouch last night at 11 pm.  I intended to start around 8 after the kids went to bed but I kept procrastinating because well quite honestly, I was a bit intimidated, having never worked with leather before.  It turns out that with a leather needle, it was fairly simple.  The shape of this clutch, based primarily off of the American Apparel one that I have a love/have relationship with, is so simple it's just a basic square or rectangle.  I made mine 11"x11" using a 9" zipper because I intentionally wanted a little fold over flap look.  Other than that it's just basic straight line sewing with a little zipper foot action.   

The only thing I need to pick up now to make this project even easier are some stronger straight pins & a thimble.  The wimpy pins I was trying to use wouldn't even push through both pieces of leather so I ended up sewing all of this, including the zipper without pinning.  That was not a simple task, and resulted in the zipper  & edges puckering a bit more than I would have liked.  That's okay, I already know what to do for next time now.

My friend Miranda has a great hookup to tons of quality leather in bright colors so we're planning a girls craft night where we'll all make these, which I think is a fabulous way to spend the night.  I just need to perfect the technique a bit more and we'll be ready to roll.  My friend Mary is an excellent seamstress and I'm planning to also have her on hand to help out.  It should be good!

*If you're interested in getting yourself a faux leather clutch, Curly In the City has a great Etsy shop and the prices are amazing.  They go quick though so you've gotta jump on them as soon as they're released.