About Esther & Leather Needle Thread

Esther Keen in her leather work studio and at her workbench with leather tools

I'm Esther — leatherworker, bag designer, and the person who packs every kit.

I studied bag design and construction at the London College of Fashion before working in the industry as a leatherworker and sample maker. After that I built my own leather bag brand, sold in independent boutiques across the UK and Japan. It taught me more about what makes a bag genuinely good — and genuinely wearable — than anything I'd learned in a classroom.

I set up Leather Needle Thread in Bristol in 2016 with a single idea: that making a beautiful leather bag from luxury Italian leather shouldn't require a sewing machine, a studio full of equipment, or years of training. It should be possible at your kitchen table, in a single sitting, and produce something you'd actually want to carry every day.

1,000+ makers. Everything learned.

Since 2016 I've taught over 1,000 people to make leather bags, clogs, espadrilles and shoes — in workshops at Folk House Bristol, The Forge and Bristol Museum, and through the kits and online courses I design myself. My kits have featured on ITV's This Morning 2022 and the kits earned an Independent Indie Best rating of 9.5/10.

What all that teaching gave me wasn't just a student count. It was a precise understanding of where people got stuck, where they found their confidence, and what made them feel genuinely proud of what they'd made. Every design decision in my kits — every simplified technique, every pre-cut panel, every illustrated step — came from watching real people make things for the first time.

The leather

Everything starts here. I source exclusively from ethically and humanely farmed animals — by-products of the legal food and meat industry in Europe — and I use only vegetable-tanned leather, tanned in Italy and Belgium.

Vegetable tanning is a slower, older process. Instead of chemicals, the leather is preserved using organic botanical extracts from Mimosa, Quebracho and Chestnut barks. It takes longer. It produces less environmental impact. The result is a leather that is fundamentally different from anything in a fast-fashion bag — stronger, more tactile, more aromatic, and more beautiful with age because the original fibres of the skin are preserved rather than broken down.

The full-grain Italian leather in the kits is the same quality used by independent bag brands sold in boutiques. You'll know it the moment you open the box.

→ What is vegetable tanned leather? Read our guide

The kits

LNT's leather bag making kits are built around a principle I arrived at through years of teaching: the fewer obstacles between you and a finished bag, the more likely you are to make something you love.

Every kit arrives with the leather pre-cut and pre-prepared. The techniques are stripped back — not dumbed down — to the simplest, most satisfying way of achieving each step. Our stitchless bag kits eliminate the sewing machine, the lining, the complicated setup entirely. Thick premium Italian leather holds its structure and shape on its own. You bring a few hours and a clear table. We give you everything else.

Shop Stitchless Leather Bag Kits

Shop leather shoe and clog making kits

The design

The bags and shoes you make here aren't like those you'd see at craft fairs. They're designed with the same clean-line, function-first sensibility as bags you'd spend money on in an independent boutique. Superfluous details have been eliminated in favour of purpose-driven construction. The way the bag is put together — the rivets, the way panels meet, the weight and grain of the leather — becomes the aesthetic itself.

The goal has always been simple. Make something you'll carry every day and feel genuinely proud that you made it.