Q.  How are you?? You look and seem to be awesome! I have been needing and looking for a leather sewing machine for quite some time now…but I feel lost, I really do not know what to get, where to go or how to find one and then I thought…SHARON will know:) I mainly work with soft leathers, deer hide, pig skin, some thicker but I need something rather than my home sewing machine to sew my handbags and wallets together..do you have any suggestions of what I need, brand and where I should look to get one. I am not sure if i need something industrial or not. I really appreciate the help!! Congrats on Portland Sewing, it looks amazing, I will be needing to stop by for sure! Thank you so much!

A.  You can easily feed leather through a Juki industrial lockstitch machine.  But the layers may not feed consistently and you have to be careful about track marks from the feed dogs when topstitching.  Bottom line, you need a Pfaff sewing machine.  But you have to get the ones with the IDT (built-in walking foot).  This means a Select 3.0 (about $659.95) or higher.  You know me.  I own 15 machines — and that doesn’t even count the industrial machines.  I love them all for one reason or other.  But for leather and tough fabrics, you have to have a Pfaff.  Yes, other machines have an attachable walking foot, but they are hard to attach, large, clunky and noisy.  No one has the power and consistent feed of a Pfaff.  And get one of the older ones if you can (7570 or 2144 are my favorites).  Since Viking bought the company and started changing the Pfaffs to be more Viking-like, the quality has really gone downhill.

I sew all my lambskins and pigskins with a Schmetz Universal size 12 needle and use size 16 on thicker deer hide.  Cowhide I run through my walking foot Juki industrial machine.  Hope this helps!