I’m trying to make a 3d printed handle for my cosplay axe. It’s suppose to have woven strips of leather, but I’m unsure how to have it curve around the handle while varying it’s depth so that pieces can overlap/go under leather strips. Something that can be modular or have matching edges so that it can be repeated to desired length would also be cool. My best geuss is using cuves/paths, but I can’t get my head around what combination and orientation I should use. Solution must not be textured based because it doesn’t modify vertex geometry needed for 3d printing.
The only texture based solution i could think of that would work for 3d printing would be using a displacement modifier with the woven leather texture as the displacement map.
Would save the effort of modeling by hand, but then the problem comes with making a good displacement map to alter the surface in a convincing and realistic way…
Other than that, i would just jump into quad view in the viewport (Ctrl+Alt+Q), and use curves to wrap around the handle. Due to the quad view its much easier to wrap a curve around an object, as you can see top, side, front and perspective view all in one window.
Then after the curves are wrapped around the handle, i would modify the tilt and taper to get a realistic randomness to the geometry…
A very tedious process all together though. I remember trying to wrap fairy lights around a dense tree once and it started to take so long i just gave up, but seen as though it’s just a handle, it might not be so annoying to get done 
edit: If you model a single strip of the leather, you could also use the wrapped curves by adding a curve modifier (With the wrapped curve as the deform object) and an array modifer to the leather strip object. The mesh will then follow the curves path as you use the array mod. I think both objects origin need to be at the grid centre for this to work properly? all though im not 100% sure about that
Well, figured out how to do it. As you might be able to see. I used quite a few arrays to modify a basic link of leather. The array labeled rotation uses an empty to reflect the leather strips for strips going in the opposite direction. The empty is parented to the mesh so that when I rotate the mesh to get the right angle, the empty is kept at the right offset. I curve modifier then curves what would otherwise be a square array. There is many overlapping parts so removing doubles and adding ends to the leather strips is necessary before applying the subsurf. After that it’s just a matter of using a bolean modifier to cut the correct section out so that it can be copied several times in a row.
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Nice work The result looks great.
Glad you managed to get it done! 