Finished leather passport cover with saddle-stitched edges holding a passport on a workbench.
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A Leather Passport Cover

ByPeter Joeseph 'Briefcase Maker' Kalafatis

Thin leather, two pockets, one long seam, and a document you cannot afford to lose.

A leather passport cover is a sleeve for a small, stubborn rectangle: a folded piece of thin vegetable-tanned leather with a pocket at each end that the passport’s own covers slide into, stitched once around the edge. It is the simplest thing in this category to draw and one of the hardest to make look right, because it is small and thin and every stitch sits a few inches from somebody’s eyes at a check-in desk. My bench is set up for heavy bridle. This project asks for nearly the opposite.

Video: Make A Leather Passport Cover – FREE PDF PATTERN!, from MAKESUPPLY on YouTube.

The passport sets the pattern

You do not design the size. The passport office already did.

Hands saddle stitching the edge of a thin leather passport cover with two needles.

Start with the book, not with my habits. Passports follow a shared standard, and ICAO’s Doc 9303, Part 4 puts the nominal size of a TD3 passport page at 125 mm wide by 88 mm high, about 4.92 by 3.46 inches. The tolerance is tight, plus or minus 0.75 mm either way. The same document allows the 88 mm side to grow when the binding needs it, so the spine of a thick passport can add a little.

That means two numbers drive the whole pattern: the closed size of the book and the thickness at the spine. Measure the actual passport that will live in the cover. A new one and an old one stuffed with stamps and visas are not the same thickness.

Buckleguy’s passport case pattern gives a finished size of 4 inches by 5.5 inches, length by height, which leaves a margin around a book of about 3.5 by 4.9 inches held upright. Their case also carries a boarding pass and several cards. The margin is not waste. It is where the stitch line goes, and the stitch line needs room to sit off the edge and still clear the passport inside.

Cut a test from card stock before you touch leather. Fold it, slide the passport in, and see whether the whole thing closes flat or springs open at the spine like a cheap wallet. Card costs nothing and lies to you less than you would think.

The materials list

Thin leather, fine thread, and a cement that does not bleed through.

Both patterns call for light leather. MAKESUPPLY’s passport cover build-along recommends 3/4 oz., 1.2 to 1.4 mm, vegetable or chrome tanned, in a medium to medium-firm temper. Buckleguy asks for about a square foot of 3 to 4 oz. and suggests panels of 3/3.5 oz. or 3.5/4 oz. Weaver’s thickness chart page puts one ounce at 1/64 of an inch, so this is leather a little over a sixteenth of an inch thick.

The list, from those two builds:

  • Vegetable-tanned leather, 3 to 4 oz., about one square foot
  • Card stock for the pattern, a steel ruler and a sharp craft knife
  • A wing divider and a scratch awl to mark the stitch line
  • Diamond stitching chisels, 3 mm, in 4-prong and 2-prong (the MAKESUPPLY build), and a mallet
  • Two harness needles and waxed thread (Buckleguy names Maine Thread at 0.030 inch or Ritza 25 Tiger thread, roughly 800 inches in all)
  • Rubber cement to hold the pockets in place
  • Sandpaper in 120 and 240 grit, beeswax, and a slicker for the edges
  • Edge paint, if you would rather paint than burnish

Weaver’s hand-sewing guide gives the rule for thread length: about four times the length of the stitch line. Buckleguy’s figure of 800 inches is for the whole case.

Thin leather and a heavy hand

My thumbs are calibrated for the wrong job.

Macro view of the stitched and burnished corner of a leather passport cover.

My trade is the opposite of this one. I stitch thick English bridle, and on thick work you wax the needles, pull them through with pliers, and pre-punch and line up every hole, or the work will not stitch at all. My hand-stitching page says it plainly: hand stitching tends to have slightly bigger holes, and “The hand is limited to how small it can get, especially with thick bridle saddlery leather.”

So you would think a heavy-leather man would find a passport cover easy. Less leather to push through. Smaller needles, finer thread, shorter seams.

It does not work that way, at least not for my hands. Bridle is thick and waxed, and it gives a hard pull something to bite against. Leather at 3 oz. gives you far less, so pull a thin seam the way you would pull a bridle seam and you risk a puckered line that no burnisher will hide. A hand that has learned to haul a needle through three layers of bridle has to learn to stop pulling.

The splitter will tempt you too. I split strap leather thin on an old hand-crank splitter, and it would be easy to take heavy bridle down to passport weight and call it a better leather. Maybe it would be. But a split bridle is still waxed and stiff on the grain, and a cover has to fold at the spine, every time it opens, without cracking. The two patterns here were built on plain veg tan at its natural weight. Start there.

The skill in stitching was never strength anyway. It is focus, and feeling for the moment a strand pops inside the layers. On thin leather that feeling is quieter. You have to listen harder for it.

Cutting and gluing the pockets

Every layer you add at the edge has to be stitched through later.

Trace the pattern onto the grain side with the scratch awl and cut with the craft knife against the steel ruler. Long strokes. A thin leather cut wanders the moment you hesitate, and on a small piece the wander shows.

A basic cover has three pieces: the outer shell and two pocket flaps, one for each end. The passport’s front and back covers slide into those pockets, the way a book jacket grips a hardcover. Buckleguy’s pattern uses an overlap seam, and its skills list is short: cutting, hand stitching, edge burnishing and that overlap seam.

Glue each pocket to the inside of the shell with rubber cement, which the MAKESUPPLY build lists. Keep the cement inside the stitch margin and away from the pocket opening. Glue that creeps into the mouth of a pocket glues the pocket shut, and you find out when the passport will not go in.

Then sand the glued edges flush with the 120 grit before marking anything. The edge has to be one surface, not three, before the stitch line goes on.

Stitching the cover

One seam, all the way around, and it has to look the same from both sides.

Workbench with a card pattern and cut leather pieces ready for a leather passport cover.

Set the wing divider and scribe the stitch line around the three glued sides. Weaver’s guide sets its groover at 1/8 inch; on a cover this small, keep the line close to the edge, and check that the passport still clears the stitches when it slides in.

Punch with the 3 mm diamond chisels. Weaver’s tip for even spacing is to set the first tine of the chisel in the last hole you made. Keep the 2-prong for the corners, and punch on a poly cutting board as Weaver does.

Then saddle stitch, two needles on one thread. Weaver’s method passes the front needle, then the back needle, through each hole and pulls both tight so they swap sides. I hand saddle-stitch everything I make and gave up sewing machines a long time ago, and The Maker page puts the standard where it belongs: “The side nobody sees is where a weak stitch gets found out.” On a passport cover, the side nobody sees is the inside of the pocket, which is the side the passport rubs against every day.

At the end, Weaver gives two ways out. Tie a square knot hidden inside, or backstitch two or three holes, trim the thread to about 1/8 inch, and melt the ends. A knot inside a thin pocket is a lump the passport has to sit on. Backstitch.

Leave the top edges of the pockets unstitched. They are the openings, and they get a burnished edge of their own.

Edges, the fold and the years after

A good cover should outlive the passport inside it, and the one after that.

Bevel lightly, if at all, on leather this thin. Sand with the 120 and then the 240, wet the edge, rub in a little beeswax, and burnish with the slicker until the fibers close. MAKESUPPLY’s build uses edge paint instead, and either works. I hand-burnish edges on my own work, and I would rather fix a scuffed burnish than a peeling coat.

Fold the cover with the passport inside and leave it under a weight overnight. The spine needs to learn its shape.

Passports get handled hard: pulled from pockets, stuffed into bags, set down on wet counters. The State Department’s list of what makes a passport damaged includes stains, mold and significant tears, while folded pages or a small bend do not count. A cover can take the stains and the scuffs the book would otherwise take. It cannot make the book waterproof. My Leather Care page is blunt on that point: no conditioner is waterproof, and water left sitting will spot the leather, so wipe it off at once.

Condition it now and then the way that page describes. Conditioner on a clean cloth, rubbed in briskly, left to sit, excess buffed off.

Then let the leather do what it does. English bridle stays glossy for years and takes its time breaking in, while American vegetable-tanned leather fades and patinas within months. The passport inside will expire and be replaced.

The cover does not have to.

Weaver Leather Supply Diamond Leather Stitching Chisel Set: A set of 4 mm diamond stitching chisels for punching saddle-stitch holes. See it on Amazon (affiliate link).

John James Saddlers Harness Blunt Point Needles: A set of blunt-point harness needles, five sizes with five needles of each. See it on Amazon (affiliate link).

RITZA Tiger Thread, Brown: A braided waxed polyester thread for hand-stitching leather. See it on Amazon (affiliate link).

WUTA Wing Divider: An adjustable stainless steel wing divider for marking a stitch line. See it on Amazon (affiliate link).

Barge All Purpose Cement, Quart: A quart of solvent-based contact cement. See it on Amazon (affiliate link).

Wet Dry Sandpaper Assortment, 45 Pieces: A 45-piece wet and dry sandpaper assortment that starts at 400 grit. See it on Amazon (affiliate link).

Beesworks Yellow Beeswax Bars, 6 oz: Yellow beeswax bars, 6 oz, for waxing thread. See it on Amazon (affiliate link).

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