How to make a leather tassel (with scraps cut from old sofa)

Yes, you’ve read the headline correctly, haha. I used my old sofa for this leather tassel tutorial. Hey, why not right? It’s better than just throwing the entire thing out. If you don’t have an old sofa sitting around, then you can use various other items from the thrift shop or leather/faux leather or suede from any craft or fabric store.

So let me show you how to make a leather tassel!

How to make a leather tassel

Back to my leather tassel: Do you remember that old yucky sofa from the basement that we threw out to make room for the new sectional? Find out how to dismantle sofa to fit through a door. It was one of my scariest projects ever.

Well before my husband kicked it to the curb, I told him to cut up certain sections of it that were still salvageable and I mean only for leather and faux leather. Our cat Harry who died of kidney failure had done some serious damage to it during his final month. But of course, the back of it that wasn’t exposed was ok. Believe me, they totally were, no stains, no smell.

This is certainly not groundbreaking and new by any means. There are a ton of tassel tutorials out there but I’m going to show you what I did. And the best of all is that it was completely free. You could use old jeans as well instead of leather. I love that look too.

Materials needed for leather tassel

• leather scraps
• crazy glue
• sharp scissors
• craft knife
• ruler
• pencil
• cutting mat
• wood beads (HERE and HERE) and ribbons optional

Step-by-step leather tassel tutorial

The below ugly old 80s thing is what I’m talking about! Pardon the yucky photo! It’s a very old photo.

Remember the basement looks like this now:

Find out how we cut our new sofa in half to fit it into our basement.

So I cut out a large piece of leather at 66″ long x 12″ tall, marked the top part which was 3.5 inches and then started to cut the strips into fringes.

I had a smaller leather strip that I cut with a really sharp pair of scissors but then noticed that it was much quicker to cut the large strip with a craft knife and a metal ruler.

Don’t forget to use a cutting mat, metal ruler, and a sharp craft knife.

The idea of how the tassel gets put together is to roll it at tightly as possible as you can see in the below photo.

But you need to insert the loop that will hang the tassel to the top of the tassel first.

Use a looped strip of leather or faux leather and glue it to the beginning of the piece of fringed leather before rolling it.

I used glue because it worked quickly and didn’t get lumpy like hot glue tends to get if you don’t work fast. But you can use either. Make sure to wipe any excess glue!

And as you can see, I used some of the other vintage wood beads I had bought on Etsy.

In the end, I glued a smaller fringed piece around it and then some black strips I had in my closet to the top and bottom tightly.

Different uses for leather tassels

You can use smaller leather tassels as different fashion or home decor accessories. How about a leather tassel keychain, on a purse as a purse charm (I love making purse charms. Check out the macrame feather and macrame leaf I used as a purse charm), or as jewelry. You could make them really small and hang them on earrings. That would look so cute.

Photos of finished DIY leather tassels

And of course, I had to make more in some different sizes. They all look better in groups right?

Other projects of mine pictured above and below: boho drawer pulls using macrame yarn, bleached cherry wood desk makeover, Karndean flooring review, how to install molding the easy way, DIY pendant light using jute yarn, and how to raise the height of a sofa so you can use it in your dining room.

So would you make your own easy DIY leather tassel too? It was a fun project and tassels like this also make great gifts. I watched Netflix and made some tassels. Totally my kind of fun!

Tschüß