A bridle leather briefcase handle in a stitching clam with two needles at the end of a saddle stitch.
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Finishing a Saddle Stitch: Backstitching and Burning the Thread Ends

ByPeter Joeseph 'Briefcase Maker' Kalafatis

Two needles, one thread, and the last inch that decides whether any of it holds.

A saddle-stitched seam can run perfect for eighteen inches and still fail at the end. The end is the only place the thread is not held from both directions: every stitch before it gets locked by the stitches on either side, and the last one has company on one side and nothing but air on the other. I finish the stitching on my briefcase handles by burning the thread ends, and I sew those seams by hand, the way I lay out on The Art of Hand Stitching. I saddle-stitch everything by hand now. I owned the sewing machines once, and I gave them up. Four common ways close that last inch, and every one of them sends a bill.

Video: Finishing up the briefcase handle stitching by burning the thread ends, from Marcellino NY Briefcase Maker on YouTube.

The last inch of a seam

Every stitch is locked by its neighbors. The final one has only one.

Hands pulling waxed thread tight after backstitching the end of a saddle stitch.

Picture the seam on a briefcase handle. Both needles have crossed through every hole, each stitch pulled down tight, the line clean on the face. Now two tails of thread hang out of the last hole, one on each side. Cut them flush with no lock and the thread has nothing to stop it backing out of the end, which is the exact failure every method below exists to prevent. Once the last stitch goes, the next one has lost its neighbor too.

People judge a seam by its length, the long even run of slanted stitches. The handle doesn’t care about the run. It cares about the two ends, because that is where a hand yanks a briefcase off a car seat, and where the thread has the least to hold it.

On my own page I put the standard plainly: a key aspect of hand stitching “is how clean the stitch is on BOTH sides.” The stitching page also warns that a hand-stitched seam “might look good on the outside” while the hidden layers carry trouble. The last inch tests both of those sentences at once. It has to lock, and it has to look as clean on the inside of the handle as on the face, where nobody but the owner’s palm will ever find it.

Most of the skill lives in the fingertips. You learn to feel the thread, and to know the moment a strand has popped somewhere inside the layers where no eye can follow it, and the last inch is where that feel gets tested hardest.

Every source agrees the end has to be secured. The fight is over which way, and what each way costs.

Backstitching

Turn around and sew back over the last few holes.

The simplest lock uses the holes already punched. Tandy Leather’s saddle stitching lesson says to reverse direction and sew back over the existing holes, and that “two or three backstitches are sufficient” to keep the thread from coming out. A separate Tandy guide on starting and ending sewing lines gives the same range of two to three holes, then says to pull tight and trim close.

Makers on the forums vary the count by load. In a leatherworker.net thread on backstitching, the poster who wrote the guide says he always goes back twice, and three times on high-stress items, then flattens the stitches with a hammer or bone folder. In an older thread on securing a saddle stitch, one maker goes back three holes with one thread and four with the other so both ends finish on the same side. Tim Deagan’s hand-stitching tutorial in Make: magazine also calls for backstitching two holes, then trimming close and tapping the stitches down into the groove.

I pull those last stitches the way I pull all of them, with my back and shoulders in it and not only my fingers, standing over the work.

Backstitching doubles the thread through those last holes. That is its strength, and it is also the catch: those holes now carry four passes of thread instead of two, and on thick bridle with hand-punched holes that is a lot of thread jammed into a small space. My page notes that holes punched by hand run a little bigger than a machine’s, which gives the doubled thread room. It also means a sloppy backstitch has nowhere to hide.

Tie-offs and hidden knots

A knot buried in the hole, trimmed out of sight.

Macro view of a melted thread end pressed flush at the end of a saddle-stitched seam.

Some makers want a mechanical lock, not just friction. Tandy’s guide offers a hidden knot as a second method: pass one needle under the last stitch to form a loop, pull it through, tighten it into a small knot, trim, and tuck the knot into the hole.

The forums keep older versions alive. In a 2008 thread on finishing a row of stitching, one member says an old-time saddler taught him to wrap the loop thread once around the needle on the last stitch so that it knots itself inside the hole. Bruce Johnson, a moderator there, writes that an Irish harness maker taught him to wrap once on every stitch and two or three times on the last couple, depending on the leather’s thickness. In the securing thread, one maker locks the last stitch with half hitches and pulls the knot into the middle of the layers before trimming.

My opinion: a knot inside the hole is the most honest answer to the “both sides” standard, because done right it shows on neither side. The price is skill. My page says that unskilled hand stitching is worse for the bond than unskilled machine stitching, and a knot sitting half out of the hole is a lump on the inside of a handle, the side the owner’s palm finds first.

Burning the ends

Quick, neat, and only for thread that melts.

Heat works here only because synthetic thread melts and natural thread doesn’t. Dharma Trading’s fiber burn test describes polyester and nylon shrinking from a flame, melting and leaving a “hard plastic-like bead,” while cellulose fibers such as cotton and linen burn to a soft ash and do not melt. The bead is the whole point. A melted knob at the end of the thread is too fat to pull back through the hole.

Tandy’s saddle stitch lesson gives the method for poly thread: trim the tail to about an eighth of an inch, melt it with a lighter, and do not burn the project. Good advice, and less obvious than it sounds. Its sewing-lines guide adds pressing the melted end into the leather with a tool so it blends in. Bruce Johnson, in the finishing thread, writes that he uses a fine-point soldering iron, which leaves a small knob that resists pulling back, and mentions a battery cautery pen that cuts cleanly. The UK maker Tanner Bates writes that its waxed, braided polyester thread ends are “finished and sealed by melting.”

The thread matters as much as the flame. Weaver Leather Supply lists its Ritza 25 Tiger thread as finely braided, lightly waxed, 100 percent polyester. That is the kind of thread a flame is meant for.

Then the costs. Coats, the thread manufacturer, notes that polyester and nylon are thermoplastic and start to soften well below their melting point. Hold a flame too long on a short tail, then, and it can soften the thread inside the hole along with the stub. One maker in the securing thread warns that burning waxed nylon or poly can leave a hard, sharp knot. My opinion: a flame should not linger anywhere near English bridle, which comes from the tannery carrying a heavy load of wax, and the work goes the way a line cook handles a hot pan, in and out, never left sitting.

Gluing linen

Linen will not melt, so it gets a drop of glue instead.

Finished bridle leather briefcase handle with clean saddle stitching on both sides.

Waxed linen needs a different ending. Sajou, the French firm behind Fil au Chinois waxed cable linen, describes it as linen twisted, cabled and passed through a bath of starch and beeswax, made for hand stitching leather and especially the saddle stitch. Linen burns to ash, so a flame at the end does nothing useful.

Tandy’s lesson gives the linen method in one line: skip melting and tap a drop of glue into the last hole with a needle. In a leatherworker.net thread on gluing linen ends, the posters split. Several say a proper backstitch alone has never loosened on them, and one cites 35 years of work that includes sled-dog harness. Another says he has had linen come loose and argues that is exactly why people glue linen or burn poly. In the 2008 finishing thread, one maker runs clear nail polish or fabric glue over the clipped ends.

Nail polish, on a saddle seam. The forum has seen everything.

My opinion: glue is insurance, not a lock. It earns its place on linen, where there is no bead to stop the thread backing out. On a seam that was backstitched badly, no amount of glue will save it.

Where the both-sides rule decides it

A clean palm side beats a fast finish.

The case for burning is real. It is quick, it gives the end a mechanical stop, and on synthetic thread it is the method the toolmakers teach. I use it on briefcase handles.

Turn the handle over and the argument against it is just as real. A melted bead that sits proud of the leather is a hard point right where the fingers wrap. Clean to look at, rough to hold. That does not meet the standard on my page, and it is the reason I would put the backstitch first and the flame second: the backstitch carries the load, the burn only stops the stub from creeping. My opinion is that a burn without a proper backstitch behind it is a shortcut dressed up as a finish.

Which leaves me in an odd spot. The step I put on camera is, in my opinion, the least important thing that happens to the end of that seam.

A handle on a briefcase that is meant to look right in a hundred years will be picked up more times than anyone counts, and in my view every one of those lifts tests the ends of the seam before it tests the middle. The saddle stitch is the stitch of tack, the same one my stitching page describes holding horse tack together for a 2,000-pound animal, and saddlers kept their own trade for a long time, as the post on why cordwainers and saddlers were never the same guild lays out.

What none of the sources can settle is how much heat is too much on a given tail, on a given day, with a given thread. That stays at the bench.

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).

Mandala Crafts 150D 0.8mm Black Flat Waxed Thread: A flat waxed polyester thread, 0.8 mm, in black, for hand sewing leather. See it on Amazon (affiliate link).

WUTA Genuine Bone Folders: Genuine bone folders for creasing and folding leather. 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).

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. A commission may be earned if you buy through this link, at no extra cost to you.

Sources

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