Leather Lace Finger Knitting

Did I say I’d put this post up Tuesday?  I obviously meant Thursday. 

Anyway, on Monday I shared a tutorial  on how to finger knit.  Today I am showing how I upgraded the technique using leather lace to make some cool and funky accessories. 

I made a necklace and bracelet that I love:

Another necklace that is so so:

And a belt that did not turn out as awesome as I envisioned in my head.  I think I’ll work on that design a bit more and see if I can make it work out.

Want to make your own awesome leather jewelry?  Here’s what I used:

Leather Lace:  You can find leather lace at your local fabric store (I got these at both Joann’s and Hancocks.  Mine is ¼ inch thick.)  The length varies based on what you are making.  For the bracelet I used 3 yards, for the necklace I used 4 yards. If you want to take a stab at making a belt you will need at leat 10 yards.

Leather Cording:  In the second picture shows leather cording, it is much skinnier and better for adding beads to.  I used 8 yards for the long necklace.

Bedazzlement:  Grab some funky charms, beads, or whatever to add on.  Also helpful, some jewelry clasps and rings.

Refer back to the finger knitting tutorial if you need a reminder on how to do that.  Working with leather lace is much different from working with yarn.  Yarn is stretchy so you can easily pull it away from your fingers, but the lace is stiff and tight, so you need to make sure that you keep it loose around your fingers.

In the above picture you can see how I pulled the lace away from my fingers to make it easier to pull off.  Also, the leather lace can snap if you pull it too tight, so another good reason to keep it loose.

For the bracelet and necklace made with the leather lace, I just knit them up as normal and added the charms afterwards using jewelry rings.  Super easy!

For the black necklace using the leather cording I added the beads as I knit.  To do this, before you start you need to string all the beads you will use onto the cording.

Start the finger knitting as normal.  After the first pass, pull up four beads and arrange them so one is under each finger, like this:

Then just knit as normal, making sure that the bead stays next to the finger.

Does that make sense?  Do this for each finger.  Work one row with no beads, then pull up four more beads and repeat.  Keep doing this until you have the length you want.  Here is an up close shot of the finished necklace:

It is funky and chunky and I love it!

To finish off each piece I added some jewelry clasps.

These were fun to make and are fun to wear!  Hope you try it out!