Military Inspired Leather Accents

I have such a fun project for you today! I love the idea that you can take affordable clothing and embellish it to make a unique and stylish garment. For this military-inspired dress, I added leather accents and buttons to transform an ordinary, plain dress into an eye-catching, yet still comfortable dress. It was simple to achieve this look using the amazing leather-cutting abilities of the new Cricut Explore machine. (afflink)  Yes! You read that right – Cricut can cut leather!!! I’m sharing this dress today as part of the Cricut Design Space Star challenge – the challenge for this round was Clothing & Apparel and my team’s design theme was….military inspired, of course! Ready to see how easy it is to make this look?

You will need:

• 8″ x 10″ scrap of leather
• Plain garment (I found my dress at Target for $24.99)
• Cutting Machine (I used the Cricut Explore)
• Leather sewing machine needle
• 8 buttons
• leather hand sewing needle

Instructions:

1. Place leather scrap onto Cricut cutting mat and cut out accent pieces (I used a regular blade and the light leather setting).
2. Remove entire leather scrap. The accent pieces are still attached to the scrap at the corner points which makes it easy to align the strips evenly on your garment. Pin the leather scrap to your garment making sure that pins are only placed in the “scrap” portions of the leather (pins leave holes).
3. Use a leather needle on your sewing machine and a longer stitch length to stitch around the perimeter of each accent piece.
4. Carefully snip the corners of each accent piece to remove them from the scrap.
5. Admire your stitching!
6. Use a leather hand-sewing needle to attach buttons on the ends of each accent piece. Voila!

This is the first time I’ve used the Cricut Explore machine and I’m pretty excited about its potential. It wasn’t as easy to get going as my older machine with the cartridges, but being able to design using the online software has so much more to offer. Also, I was really impressed with how well the machine cut the leather – a much cleaner cut that trying to cut fabric. I foresee quite a few more leather projects in the future!