OT: AUUURRRGH! Never a good day when there's a coffee spill before 8 am... help!

I feel your pain , though I have no idea's on the coffee problem - except to suggest that if you don't find a way to get it *out* then the best solution is to get the toddy concentrate on the whole bag making it all the same but darker all I know is that coffee has this nasty habit of setting :-S

Don't know if it will solve this particular problem, but Coach leather cleaner has worked well on my bags. The conditioner is nice too. And after it's all clean, you might want to spray well with that silicone stuff. Roberta in D

"FurrsomeThreesome" schrieb im Newsbeitrag news: snipped-for-privacy@l12g2000cwl.googlegroups.com...

You might try a shoe repair place....they deal with leather all the time. Ours is a "hospital" and they are good at dealing with emergencies~hope you have something similar.....

Sorry about your bag....I hate it when stuff like that happens.....

Laurie G. in rainy CA

Thanks - I've been looking up shoe repair/leather care places this morning.

The manufacturer might be hard to suss out - Cirque du Soleil boutique sources artisans from all over, and this was supposed to be a "handmade in italy" but it is not a branded thing in any way that I can find.

The leather parts of the bag HAVE been treated with weatherproofing and were glossy to begin with, so maybe I have a chance.

If not, yeah, soaking the WHOLE thing in the coffee did cross my mind. The colour alteration might be OK, but the smell might get a bit overpowering.

dang dang dang.....

Johanna (now drinking tea, AWAY from my handcrafted goods.)

Pat > Johanna: Maybe you should send an SOS to

You can try saddle soap, especially if you can do it within 24 hours of the disaster.

Your best bet though would probably be to get it to the cleaners asap.

Assuming the stain would be the ruination of the bag, and you cannot get it to a cleaner _now_, then go at it with the saddle soap. Be generous with the saddle soap. In addition to cleaning it contains a conditioner so you shouldn't have to fuss with oils and things. Normally I would tell you to do a test patch to check to see if any color comes up with the soap, but that is probably a moot issue at this point. Hang the bag open to dry with the lining out.

This is all assuming that we are talking about smooth finished leather and not suede. If it is suede you can probably toss it into the washer with woolwash and a quarter cup of salt, then tumble dry with tennis balls. Do check the stitching first, sometimes manufacturers shirk if they assume the item will only be professionally cleaned.

Coffee concentrates have a distressing tendancy to become peranent if allowed to dry so time is of the essence. Coffee is one of several reasons most of my leather is black.

NightMist

....cut....

Just for the suede. Woolwash because it won't eat the leather the way some detergents will, and the salt because it makes the suede hold up to the washing without going creaky, crackly, and defuzzing. Dunno why. You do have to adjust the amount of salt to the size of the load, a case of too much being better than too little. At least a quarter cup for a small load, a half cup for medium, and a full cup for a large load. I've recently been told that a proper oil soap works better than woolwash, proper meaning it is soap not detergent. I also know people who swear by shampoo, but there you walk into along standing debate. In a pinch I have shaved saddlesoap into the washer, and that worked really well. (had to get blood out before it dried)

NightMist