The picture above shows the stitching craftsmanship of a Mini Kelly 2 bag from Shebag, with top-tier quality visible to the naked eye. Shebag has always attached great importance to product quality because we have refused to make or accept inferior products for fifteen years. We have always insisted on pursuing high-standard craftsmanship, which has helped us accumulate a large group of long-term loyal customers. We firmly believe that stable quality and attentive service are the core of sustainable operation, so we never worry about a lack of customers, and Shebag handmade bags will never become overstocked inventory.

Today we will introduce the professional stitching technology applied to Shebag’s top-level handmade bags, which fully adopts the original saddle stitch craft used by Hermès. For premium handmade bags, we only use French Fil au Chinois pure linen waxed thread as the core stitching material, which is repeatedly soaked with natural beeswax three to five times. This special thread features waterproof, anti-fuzz and wear-resistant properties, and can form a delicate and warm patina after long-term use, aging naturally and synchronously with the leather material. We strictly implement one-to-one color matching for all threads to ensure consistent color with the leather without obvious chromatic aberration.

Meanwhile, we adopt fixed thread specifications: 0.55mm thick thread for the main seams of Birkin and Kelly series bags, and 0.35mm fine thread for small accessories and inner bag parts, and we never use low-grade chemical fiber polyester thread commonly used in ordinary replica products.

We are equipped with a full set of professional customized tools for top-level production, including British John James round-head hand-sewing needles. The blunt and round needle tip will not scratch the leather grain surface or crack hard leather such as crocodile leather and Box calf leather, and the large needle eye is perfectly compatible with thick waxed thread.

We also use 4mm and 3.85mm fixed-pitch diagonal diamond pricking irons to create standard diagonal diamond holes for stable diagonal stitching, professional cowhide mallets for hole punching and stitch finishing without leaving hard metal marks, sewing ponies to clamp and fix leather pieces steadily, free craftsmen’s hands and ensure flat and uniform stitching lines, and professional skiving knives to thin the leather edge of the stitching part to 0.4 to 0.6 millimeters, effectively avoiding bulging of multi-layer leather lamination and ensuring flat and neat joints.

Strict pre-stitching pretreatment is the key to ensuring flat and delicate stitching. We will bevel and thin the fitting edges of two leather pieces in advance to make the laminated leather thickness uniform without raised indentations.

We use edge gauges to draw equidistant stitching tracks to keep the width of all seams consistent. With a cowhide mallet, we tap the diamond pricking iron at a constant speed to make uniform inclined diamond holes with smooth hole walls and no cracked leather. We adopt differentiated standard stitch densities: 8 to 9 stitches per centimeter for the main body of the bag, and 10 to 14 stitches per centimeter for stress-bearing parts such as handles and tabs for reinforcement. In addition, we apply 12 to 15 layers of edge paint to the leather edges before stitching, and only carry out fine trimming after sewing, which can effectively prevent the stitching thread from being dyed black by edge paint.

The whole bag adopts the mature double-needle saddle stitch technology, which uses a complete waxed thread with a needle threaded at each end. The two needles penetrate the same pricked hole from opposite directions to lock the thread mutually. Different from ordinary machine stitching, this process will not cause the whole seam to unravel even if a single thread breaks, greatly improving the bearing capacity and durability of the stitching. In the specific sewing process, we fix round-head needles at both ends of the long waxed thread respectively and reinforce the needle tail to ensure the two thread segments are of equal length, then fix the leather pieces on the sewing pony with the front side facing outwards.

We insert the left needle diagonally from the front of the leather and the right needle reversely from the back of the leather through the same hole, cross and tighten the two threads evenly in the middle of the leather to form a standard 4 to 5 degree uniform diagonal wavy stitch from upper left to lower right on the front of the bag, which is the core identification feature of high-standard handmade leather stitching in the industry. The two needles alternately pass through the subsequent pricked holes, with each stitch tightened diagonally at a constant speed to avoid uneven tension. The front stitches are slightly raised on the leather surface to form a three-dimensional wavy texture, while the back stitches are perfectly symmetrical with the front without the looped lines unique to machine sewing.

Double backstitch reinforcement is adopted at all corners including 90-degree bag edges and flap corners to prevent cracking caused by long-term pulling. When the stitching is completed, we sew back 3 to 4 stitches reversely to lock the tension firmly, tuck the thread ends into the middle of the two layers of leather, and press and bury the thread ends in the leather interlayer with a cowhide mallet, realizing completely hidden thread knots and ends with no traces exposed on the surface of the bag.