Lay out every pattern piece before cutting leather. The Colorado State 4-H Leathercraft manual recommends doing this so pieces can be rearranged before a shortage becomes a cut. This planner gives you a starting arrangement for rectangular pieces on a usable rectangular panel. It shows missing pieces rather than silently dropping them.

Plan a measured panel

Leather panel cutting-layout planner

Plan rectangular pattern pieces inside a measured usable rectangle. This is a geometry sketch, not a hide scan or a cut file.

Example values are loaded. Replace them with your measurements. Your entries stay in this page.

Pattern pieces (all dimensions use the selected unit)

Width runs across the panel. Height runs down it. Keep the pattern's required grain direction by leaving rotation off. Include seam allowances in each piece.

Defects and areas to avoid

Measure from the panel's top-left corner. Use a rectangular exclusion around each defect. Overlapping exclusions are counted once.

Use the calculator to see your result.

The diagram is a planning sketch, not a full-size print template, cutting-machine file or scan of your hide. Keep the paper pattern beside the leather for the final check.

Prepare the dimensions first

  1. Measure a usable rectangle inside the leather’s actual outline. Exclude curved edges from that rectangle. If the hide cannot supply one rectangle, plan separate measured panels.
  2. Enter the cutting dimensions of each piece, including any seam allowance specified by your pattern. This tool does not add it automatically.
  3. Orient the panel and pieces consistently. Width runs left to right on the diagram; height runs top to bottom. Leave rotation off when the pattern requires that direction.
  4. Enter quantities and a cutting gap in the same unit. A gap is your selected planning allowance, not a prescribed knife clearance.
  5. Add measured rectangles around holes, weak areas or other places you intend to avoid. X and Y start at the panel’s top-left corner.

The 4-H manual’s cutting-and-sewing section discusses matching grain and suede nap direction, avoiding weak areas or holes, and placing all pieces before cutting. The tool does not identify any of those characteristics from dimensions. You decide where the usable material is and which rotations the pattern permits. It supports 90° rotation only; a one-way surface may also rule out turning a physical piece end for end.

Weaver’s leather selection guide separates leather choices by project. A layout calculation cannot establish that a panel has the right leather type, thickness or condition for a wallet, bag or belt. Resolve that choice before treating the diagram as a cutting plan.

Read the diagram and coordinate list

Purple rectangles are placed pieces; dark rectangles are exclusions. Each piece is labeled type.copy, so 2.3 means the third copy of piece type two. The expandable coordinate list gives each placed piece’s X, Y, width, height and rotation. Every unplaced piece is listed explicitly.

For an easy arithmetic check, enter a 300 × 200 mm panel with six 100 × 100 mm pieces, no exclusions and zero gap. All six fit and use the full 60,000 mm² rectangle. Adding a positive gap changes that result: the six pieces no longer tile the same panel edge to edge. These are invented geometric example dimensions, not measured stock or a recommended cutting allowance.

Choose millimeters, centimeters or inches and use that unit everywhere in the form. Changing the unit label does not convert your existing numbers. For manual conversion, NIST’s inch definition gives exactly 25.4 millimeters per inch.

How placement and unused area are calculated

The planner sorts pieces from largest area to smallest, then searches candidate positions from top to bottom and left to right. It tries the entered orientation first and a 90° rotation only when you allow it. Each placement must stay within the panel and clear previous pieces and exclusions by the entered gap.

This greedy method finds one feasible arrangement. An unplaced piece does not prove that every possible arrangement fails. Try a different usable panel or compare a manual layout. Irregular contours, interlocking shapes, mirrored pairs and curved nesting are outside this tool’s scope. Entering a bounding rectangle for a curved pattern gives a conservative rectangular plan; it does not recover the space inside the contour.

Usable area equals panel area minus the union of all exclusion rectangles. Overlapping exclusions are counted once. Unused usable area subtracts the area of placed rectangles; it includes narrow gaps and offcuts that may not be reusable. It is not a measured waste saving or an efficiency comparison with a professional nesting system.

For the separate bench-tool decision, see the leathercraft starter-tool comparison . Return to the craft guide library for other project preparation.

Method and sources

Reviewed October 15, 2026. This is an original geometry worksheet, not hands-on material testing. It accepts up to 20 piece types, 20 exclusion rectangles and 200 pieces per panel to keep browser work bounded. It neither uploads nor stores your pattern dimensions. Use a pattern you have permission to reproduce; no pattern artwork is supplied here.