My first sporran, and a desperate plea for help!

[Ryan Ross]

I think the sporran is quite interesting, and I've always wanted to see a hairy cow sporran, as well! The tooling is quite effective, and it's a very good first attempt!

I'd reccomend a couple things for your next one:

Consider making the gusset in a heavier leather, and sew a bead trim around the outside perimeter, where the gusset attaches to the front panel- this will hide the stitches and look quite nice. Use the thinnest leather you can for this purpose and stitch with a dark colored, finer thread.

Also, think about keeping the width of the sporran the same, and making it a bit longer.

For "hair sporrans", the hair usually spans the entire front panel, rather than being framed on three sides by leather. That's another possible design consideration.

As for the loop on the back, I find that the more tightly it fits the sporran belt, the better the sporran hangs. With that in mind, the loop could possibly be a bit shorter and wider. You could, alternatively, use two loops of about the same size as the single one above.

Keep tweaking the design, and make another one as soon as you can (and post pics)! If you have no use for a sporran, I'm sure that you could find a client in one of our fellow board members.

[davidlpope]

My advice:

Avoid trying to make a hand-crafted sporran too flashy- i.e. contrasting leathers, fur/hair, tooled leather, etc. All this tends to make such sporrans look like a Boy Scout craft project rather than a proper sporran. if you really want to find a niche market, make something similar to current sporrans, but make it in much, much better quality.

For example, consider Lamar Britt's sporrans:
http://giftshop.scottishtartans.org/sporran_fb.html

and sporrans by McRostie Leather:
https://www.said.net/secure/mcrostie/index-shop.asp

Excellent materials and superb craftsmanship beat "funky" designs IMHO.

Cordially,

David

[Wompet]

7" wide is probably a good minimum width, and 8" or 9" would be a decent depth.
... Smaller stitches with black thread would help...

... widen the hanger by a factor of about three and it will work better. Sporran straps are never more than about an inch, so if the hangar had an inside opening of 1.5 inches it would be more than adequate.

And I like the use of the magnetic clasp.

... sew a bead trim around the outside perimeter, where the gusset attaches to the front panel- this will hide the stitches and look quite nice. Use the thinnest leather you can for this purpose and stitch with a dark colored, finer thread.
...
For "hair sporrans", the hair usually spans the entire front panel, rather than being framed on three sides by leather.

Those would be the same recommendations that I would make - smaller stitching, bead trim on the front with hair across the entire face, and widen the hanger while reducing the size of the opening.