Looks like you made a good, sericeable portmanteu that could have been made by anyone who needed one in the period. The only thing I see that may not be period correct is it looks like you used modern upholstery tacks. You could replace them with domed tacks to make it more correct.
A saddler, cordwainer or other skilled leather worker at the time would have made it differently, but that's because they knew things you don't.
Here is a link that shows some really good closeups of the ends of portmanteu's (sp?). The tan one, especially, is easy to see how they sewed up the ends.
http://www.tstarleather.com/portmanteau.htmOK, so how does one sew those edges? (Takes me back over 25 years when I asked the Cordwainer at Colonial Williamsburg how they sewed up a dice cup as it required the same stitching as I needed to do to make sword and bayonet scabbards.) First, you need a curved awl and that's the "secret" I did not know back then.
On the round leather end pieces, you mark your holes all around the pieces using an overstitch wheel to make good even hole spacing. You can do it by eye, but the stitching won’t look as even as nice as it does with the stitching wheel. You want to mark those holes back about 3/16” to just a little more than that from the edge of the leather. Moisten the leather where you are going to stitch the holes with a little water on a sponge. With the curved awl, you first press down and then press with a curving pressure so the point of the awl comes out in the middle of the thickness of the leather at the edge of the leather. Sounds a whole lot tougher to do than it is. Try it first on scrap leather from the hide you cut your pieces from and with practice, you will develop the feel to do it consistently.
Now on the leather ends of the tube, you have to punch your holes differently. I would set the distance from holes to the end of the leather about 1/4” or a little more depending on how thick your leather is. That will cause the ends of the tube to be right at or just beyond the plane of the round end pieces. (If the ends of the leather tube stick too far out from the rounded ends, you can trim the leather closer after you are done sewing them, but you normally want that leather to stick out a little bit.) You mark holes pretty much the same with the stitching wheel and you moisten the leather the same. I usually don’t mark and punch holes all the way across the ends of the tubes at this time. That’s because I want to be able to adjust the number of holes in the ends of the tube to the same number as the holes in the round end pieces. I actually start stitching before I mark all the holes in the leather tube ends and add more holes as I go along. It’s something you just have to do to find out what is best for you.
You use a straight awl and press straight down on the awl so it goes through the leather at 90 degrees or a right angle. That way the holes will come out on the opposite side of the leather the same distance from the end of the leather as on the top.
As you sew up the holes, you want to make sure you moisten the leather so the needles and thread don’t tear out the leather. Before I push the needle through each hole, I use the curved awl to sort of “work open” the hole a little bit and to align both holes.
Now, since I doubt this will be entirely clear, I most strongly recommend you buy the book “The art of handsewing leather” by Al Stohlman. I wish to God I had that book when I first began sewing hunting pouches, scabbards, cartridge boxes, cap boxes and other leather items, but it was not available then. I STILL refer back to my page worn copy every now and then 25 years after I bought it. It has excellent drawings that show you what I am talking about here. You can get it from many sources, but here is one source.
http://www.tandyleatherfactory.com/home/department/Leather-Stamps/Leather-Stamps-Backgrounders/61944-00.aspxGus
