Details on a Leather Valet Tray

I wanted to make a valet tray, refine the details, and make it my own. I’ve seen others do them stitched together or use snaps so that they can lay flat. While I like the utility, I don’t see myself having stacks of trays that I want to store away when I’m not using them. I thought it would be helpful to our readers for me to illustrate how I work out some details on my piece and what I think of when building a new project.

Instead, I wanted to focus on how the inside pairs with the outside. How can I make the corners more elegant and interesting? As I wrote about a few weeks ago, I wanted to push my technique a bit and do something simple and relatively fast to practice.

The corners are the most visible part of the tray, so I started making a small test piece to work out that detail.  The first challenge was cutting the interior and exterior so that the inside stayed smooth at the bends in the tray. If cut the same, the outside will stretch, or the inside will wrinkle. We go over this detail and many others in our online course, Refining Your Technique. The updated and expanded course is opening later this month. I worked out the lengths and how much to skive the thicknesses where the corners join vs the bottom and sides.

You can see how the corner folds, but the interior smoothly curves upward. If this were first glued flat, the bend would bunch up on the inside.

The outside also bends easily upward without any stretching or distortion.

Another detail was the edge finishing. Both leathers can be burnished, but the corner here is very short. I could do a simple burnish in the corner and then a full edge-finishing around the rim. Since the corners are so prominent, the difference might be noticeable. I elected to use a thin layer of paint and burnish over it so the surface was more consistent.

One thing I did not account for was the temperature of the crease. The inside was a soft, full aniline calf, and the outside a combination tan. I like the contrast between the harder, smoother exterior and the softer, textured interior. Also, I am a glutton for punishment, and combining these two leathers is challenging. These contrasting materials required different creasing temperatures. The interior was also naked, so it pulled in the paint and water. I would need to use a minimal amount of both if I didn’t want to bleed the edge.

My goal was to sew it all in one go, so I noted where there would be backstitches and checked whether any part of the seam went to a dead-end. The next detail I wanted to examine was how the corners sew together. I see many trays use a stitch over the edge to tighten the corners because that is the part of the tray that wants to come apart the most. I don’t like the over-the-edge stitch. It exposes the thread to possible abrasion and forces you to finish your edges before sewing. Instead, I chose to do a backstitch at each corner where the seam turns vertical.  A couple of challenges arose: how to hold and sew the piece.

You have to change directions several times to accomplish this stitch. A sewing clam works if you’re willing to contort yourself a bit. Fortunately, the sewing tower helped me hold the test piece in whatever position I needed.

You start sewing towards the corner, then join it together three holes before the corner. Put the needle through the other edge and start sewing together the corner on hole three. The last stitch is in the corner, so a round hole looks best if you work out how to place it well where the two stitches meet. Then, the stitch turns, requiring a quick reposition of the jig.

The vertical stitch is fully backstitched, reinforcing the corner. This isn’t a high-stress piece, so further reinforcement felt unnecessary. Lastly was the transition back to a single edge. You can sneak out the needle at the third hole where you started putting the corner together.

There are some details still to improve. For example, I thought about smoothing out the transition from the two layers to a single layer. I also wanted to see whether rounding the corner improved the look. I could do both by trimming back the corner after sewing and edge finishing again.

I did not like the result. It felt off, perhaps because the curve’s radius was too big or the shape contrasted with the rest of the tray’s more angular shapes. By working out the details of the most visible parts using a test piece, I could do the project with more refinement and work more confidently.

Now, I can move on to the project. I wanted to push the contrast more between the inside and the outside, so I chose a similar interior leather with a bolder color. The thread is a darker hue of purple, and it bridges the interior and exterior colors nicely.

Here is the finished tray:

The interior curves went extremely well and smoothly transitioned from the center to the edges. For sewing, I ended up using two threads because the length was more manageable; I sewed half the tray at a time. It also proved out that I could start and stop in a corner and keep the backstitches symmetrical. I liked the contrast of the interior and exterior, both in color and texture.

There are a few details to refine further. The corners point too sharply. Looking back at my test corner above, I like it better between the two. On the next iteration, I’ll split the difference by rounding the corners with a smaller radius. I also don’t like the edge finishing on the short edges. They are harder to access but very prominent, so I’ll spend more time fussing over them in the future. Lastly, the exterior leather is wrinkling at the corners, which is caused by too much thread tension and leather thickness. I might try skiving at the corner a bit less or using a different exterior leather that can hold up under more tension.

Overall, I think it’s a great first pass. I like internalizing the reinforcement of the stitching, so I don’t have to do an over-the-edge stitch. The simple contrast of materials elevates the piece into finer work without unnecessarily adding embellishments. I faded in a skive at the corners where all four layers combined, creating less thickness difference in the transition, which eases in from the edge to the corner.

Have you made a similar tray before? I’d love to see your variations and see how they could inspire others.