I don’t believe in using one thread for an entire leather jacket. Leather doesn’t behave that way, and neither should the stitching. Different seams take different loads, and if you treat them all the same, the jacket will eventually tell on you.
Most of the time, I’m sewing with artificial sinew. Not because it’s trendy, because it earns its place. I split it depending on the seam. Thinner runs usually land around 0.6 – 0.8 mm, heavier pulls closer to 1.0 mm when I leave more strands together. Same material, different jobs. It lets me move through a jacket without constantly switching threads.
For hand stitching and awl work at Leatherings, I rely on waxed nylon, usually around 0.6 mm. The wax isn’t optional. When you’re stitching close to the edge about 3 mm in on jacket panels, dry thread fights the leather. You feel it immediately once tension goes on. Wax keeps the pull clean and the stitch honest.
I also keep plain nylon thread on the bench. Cheap stuff. It’s not waxed, so I wax it myself before using it. Once it’s prepped, it holds up fine for internal seams, alignment work, and test runs. Not everything needs to be pretty, some seams just need to behave.
One rule in the Leatherings workshop never changes:
if it touches leather, the thread is waxed.
Dry thread doesn’t glide. It drags. It twists. And once leather starts resisting, the stitch line follows the mistake all the way down the panel.
There’s no single “best” thread for leather jackets. Zippers pull differently than shoulder seams. Curves behave differently than straight runs. That’s why we keep options on the bench at Leatherings instead of forcing one solution onto every problem.
Good stitching isn’t about what thread you buy.
It’s about knowing where that thread will be tested and choosing accordingly.
That decision is made long before the first stitch ever goes in.
John Micheal
John Michael is a master leather crafter and co-founder of Leatherings.
Since 2019, he has overseen every critical stage of jacket construction from pattern cutting to zipper setting, building leather jackets defined by precision, balance, and longevity.
