When I started playing around with leather in 2020, I had no intentions of selling anything I made. In fact, I resisted when people tried to pay me. All I wanted to do was make my dog a collar and myself a custom knife sheath. Then some friends caught wind of my new hobby and I was commissioned for a few things. I hated charging people and would often just ask for vehicle repairs or dinner in exchange.
Life got busy and leatherworking took a back seat to some other things: graduate school, a full-time job, long-distance with some guy in the Navy, a cross-country move, a second dog, and finally marriage to said Navy guy (his name is Justin, by the way). Following a crazy few years, I found myself with a lot of free time while looking for a job in coastal Virginia. With nothing but free time, I spent a few months relearning the basics of leatherworking, developing new skills, and designing my own functional leather goods.
Since then, I have been blessed with a full-time job that allows me to learn about agricultural practices in Virginia, and maintain some financial stability. My attention was pulled away from leather while I learned the ropes of a new job and running a household while Justin was deployed. In September 2025, I started to consider the idea of selling my leather products. I mulled over the idea for a long time, and decided that a name would make the idea real, so I came up with one: Backeddy Leatherworks.
So, why Backeddy?
The aforementioned dog was named Eddy and I think everyone has their own version of him. He went everywhere with me, stole everyone’s hearts, and was as loyal as they come. I picked him up from the Beaverhead Animal Shelter in Dillon, MT on January 16, 2021, and we were attached at the hip ever since. He would supervise me while I fed cows, built fence, welded, and wrote papers. I never met a single person who didn’t absolutely love him, and he stole the show as ringbearer in our wedding. He was my best friend and the reason I stayed sane through some crazy periods.
During one of Justin’s deployments, I found out Eddy had cancer, and on the same day, had to make the difficult decision to say goodbye. While still being one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever had to make, I know we gave him the best life we could, and he had not reached the point of suffering. The next day, a package arrived in the mail for me: a custom “Backeddy Leatherworks” stamp that I had ordered weeks prior.
So that’s that. A not-so-brief recap of why I’m taking on this hare-brained idea. All because I wanted to make my dog a collar.
“Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters.”
Colossians 3:23