A bridle leather briefcase panel with a long gusset clipped in place before stitching.
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Cutting and Stitching a Gusset

ByPeter Joeseph 'Briefcase Maker' Kalafatis

Every gusset fails in the same order. Learn the order and you can stop it at each step.

A leather gusset is the strip that gives a case its depth, and it is the part of a briefcase where small mistakes stack up and come due all at once at the last corner. The briefcase glossary on this site calls it the side panel that gives the bag its depth. I have saddle stitched briefcase gussets, punched stitching holes into a gusset, and stitched a front panel to a main gusset. What follows is one task, a single gusset running down one side of an unlined bridle case, across the bottom and up the other side, and what goes wrong at each step, with the fixes other makers have written down and my opinions marked as mine.

Video: Saddle Stitching Briefcase Gussets, from Marcellino NY Briefcase Maker on YouTube.

The gusset that comes up short

Cut it long. Leather does not grow back.

Hands pulling a needle through a thick bridle leather gusset corner with pliers.

The first way to ruin a gusset is to cut it to the length the math said and find out the math was wrong. A gusset rides around a perimeter that has corners, and corners eat length in ways a ruler on a flat panel does not show.

Makers on leatherworker.net give two schools. In a thread on finding gusset length, the member billybopp gives the perimeter of a round-cornered panel as 2(h−r) + (w−2r) + πr, with h the side height, w the bottom width and r the corner radius. Then he says to cut a little long anyway and trim in place. Another member, AndyL1, skips the formula, cuts double the height plus the width, attaches it, and cuts off the excess. A third, BAD HIDE, builds a paper prototype first and measures off that.

The cut-long method has one weak spot, and the same thread names it. The member paramedic192 points out that trimming later does not work when pockets or fittings have to line up on both sides. On a case like that, calculate it, then check it by hand, which is what the original poster, DavidL, recommends.

My opinion: on an unlined case with no inside pockets, cut long and trim. A few inches of bridle in the scrap pile costs less than a gusset that stops an inch shy of the top on the last side.

Where the strip comes from matters as much as how long it is. I wrote about cutting a briefcase out of a bridle leather bend, and I have cut two single-gusset briefcases from a bend and a shoulder. My gussets run thinner than my panels, so the case bends at the sides instead of creasing across its face. A gusset at full panel weight will fight you around every corner and win.

Forcing one piece around a square corner

A round corner takes one strip. A sharp one may want three.

The second failure is asking a single strip of stiff vegetable-tanned leather to turn a corner it was never going to turn. It puckers, it wrinkles on the inside of the bend, or it pulls the panel edge out of line.

In the leatherworker.net thread “So how do you gusset”, the member Stetson912 says plainly that a real sharp corner cannot take a single gusset, and that a three-piece gusset may be easier. Another member, RKCrowe, passes on the advice of Valerie Michael: a three-piece gusset for squarer corners, one piece for round bags. The workshop listing for a gusset class in the Leather Crafters & Saddlers Journal makes the same point about the material, noting that veg tan is harder to shape in three dimensions than fabric or soft leather.

Shaping helps the one-piece gusset turn. RKCrowe says Al Stohlman and Valerie Michael both advise gouging, dampening and pre-forming the gusset. In a thread on sewing gussets in heavy leather, Paulsleather describes lightly dampening the gusset and forming it into a rough U, then bending the long edges back so they can be glued and stitched, and adds that it does not have to be perfect. The member silverwingit suggests skiving the inside edges along the whole length.

Notching is the shortcut, and it has a cost. One member in that thread suggests notching the gusset at the corners. Another, Matt T, warns that the notch will show on outside curves unless the edge is bound.

On bridle, a notch you can see is a notch you will keep seeing.

Holes that drift

Mark the halves and quarters. Then count.

Pre-punched stitch holes on a bridle leather panel and gusset lined up by registration marks.

The third failure shows up at the end of the seam. The panel has one more hole than the gusset, or the gusset runs one hole past the panel, and the last few stitches have nowhere honest to go.

The way around it is to mark both pieces before a chisel touches either. In the “So how do you gusset” thread, Grumpymann divides each pattern piece into halves and quarters and transfers those marks to every piece. Tugadude pre-punches his stitching holes with a chisel, laps one tooth over the last hole to keep the spacing, and does the same on the front and back panels. JackWack cuts the gusset larger and scores the flesh side where the pieces should line up.

I pre-punch and line up every hole, because thick work will not stitch any other way. The needle has to find the hole on the far side without hunting for it, and in heavy bridle there is no hunting. My notes on punching stitch holes in thick bridle cover the punching. The matching is its own job, and it happens before the punching starts.

Not everyone agrees on the order. In the hand-sewing corners thread, JLSleather says he does not punch holes until the piece is assembled, and that the trouble is more often the distance from the bend to the edge than the count. When a seam does come out a half stitch off anyway, Claire Ashton’s fix in the same thread is to stitch until you are half a stitch out, then put in one double stitch to get back on track.

The seam that creeps

Something has to hold it still while both hands are busy.

The fourth failure is quiet. The gusset slides along the panel a little with every stitch, and by the bottom corner the pieces have walked out of register. Saddle stitching takes both hands, and the leather has to stay put without them.

Makers split on how. In the “So how do you gusset” thread, Stetson912 suggests binder clips, contact cement or basting tape. Tugadude rarely glues gussets. He prefers binder clips, and he puts a needle through the first holes as a temporary pin. In the heavy-leather thread, rcsaddles glues the gusset to the panel first and then stitches, so nothing has to be held. The original poster there, VanDutch, reports that gluing did not work well for him, because of the tension it takes to bend the leather.

Kenneth D. King’s Gladstone bag in Threads Magazine has leather gussets on a fabric body, and he writes, “Notice that I used binder clips instead of pins to hold them for sewing.” He glues and clips each gusset in place one side at a time, with leather scraps under the clips to protect the surfaces.

In the corners thread, Birdman offers a stitcher’s answer: single tack stitches tied off over the top, made with the awl so they match the rest of the seam, which he says will stop the work creeping.

Turning the corner with the needles

This is where the seam gets found out.

A finished bridle leather briefcase showing a hand-stitched gusset turning the bottom corner.

The fifth failure is the stitch itself. The corner is where the gusset bends hardest, where the holes sit closest, and where a needle is most likely to go through the thread already in the hole.

On my Art of Hand Stitching page I say I stitch in the air, with the work in my hands instead of pushed against a metal plate. That page also says the needles enter each hole and skill is needed not to puncture the thread, and that a stitch can look good from outside while the hidden layers carry future problems. A gusset seam is mostly hidden layers.

Stitch order is a choice. In the “So how do you gusset” thread, Grumpymann marks the midline on each piece and sews one side starting from the midline, then the other, which leaves room for small sideways adjustments. Stetson912 attaches one side at a time. Tugadude stitches all the way around and trims the excess gusset after.

The corner is also where the hands pay. Where the gusset meets the body and a newspaper pocket, the needle goes through three layers of the thickest bridle, and that is hard on the fingers. I wax the needles and use pliers to pull them through very thick leather. On The Maker page I put it in one line: “The side nobody sees is where a weak stitch gets found out.” At a gusset corner, that side is the inside of the case.

My opinion: the back of a gusset seam is the honest side of a briefcase. A saddle stitch that looks clean on both faces at the corner was punched and matched right three steps earlier.

When the thin gusset is the wrong call

A gusset that bends is also a gusset that sags.

Here is where my own rule takes a hit. I build thin gussets so the case flexes at the sides, and I build in thick leather rather than thin leather built up with cardboard filler, because cardboard takes on moisture and breaks down. That is the argument. I believe it.

Then look at what King does in Threads. He glues chipboard to the lower portion of each gusset with contact cement. The upper half of the gusset pleats inward, and the bottom half holds its shape because of the chipboard. That is a stiffener doing a job a thin gusset cannot do on its own: keeping the bottom of a bag square while the top folds.

A thin bridle gusset on a heavy case, packed full every day, can slump at the bottom and let the case lean. A legal-size briefcase loaded with files is the hard test of that. My answer is thicker leather where the case needs to stand and thinner where it needs to bend, not cardboard. That is still a trade. The gusset cannot be stiff and supple in the same inch, and somebody has to decide which inch gets which.

Then trim the excess, and finish the saddle stitch at the top.

Leather Round Knife with Wooden Handle: A round knife with a wooden handle for cutting leather. See it on Amazon (affiliate link).

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).

Leather Skiving Knife Set, 2 Pieces: A two-piece metal skiving knife set for thinning leather edges. See it on Amazon (affiliate link).

Barge All Purpose Cement, Quart: A quart of solvent-based contact cement. 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).

FASTTOBUY Leather Stitching Pony: A desk-mounted stitching pony for holding work while sewing. See it on Amazon (affiliate link).

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