Erm... okay... not sure how that will turn out though. I did the washing with the naptha soap before I cut and sewed because of the shrinkage issue. When it came out of the washing machine it looked and felt pretty ... well... disgusting. I had to stretch out the skin again on a board and staple it down. I don't think the skin really "shrank" but it needed to be stretched out after washing it.
Just for fun, I did try dyeing some scraps of the leather that hadn't been washed, and it did work... sorta. I also tried it after putting some of that finish remover on the leather (that stinky stuff) and it worked a lot better, almost as well as after I washed the leather.
