Here's a tutorial on how to create a leather material. My tests were done in 3dsmax, but the theory of how to put the material together works for all 3d apps, and I've included at the bottom a max and maya example file.

The basic ingredients are as follows:

• Color: whatever color of leather you're after.
  
• Highlight: medium height, large base.
• Bump: perhaps some noise mixed with cellular

Here's a black leather chair I grabbed from here.

Here's a leather pouch that I grabbed from here.

First off I made some simple geometry.

For the color, I just added a regular brown, but you could also use a bitmap if you wanted more variation to the color.

Next comes the highlight, Blinn with a wide base, but a medium height. Another possibility is to use a real reflection of a white card or the environment, but for this tut, we'll just use a regular highlight.

Now comes the bump, I chose a combination of a cellular texture and a fractal noise, then reduced the amount from 30 to 14, so the bump is more subtle. You could also scan a real leather texture and use that as a bump if you're so inclined. Another thing to try is adding some more noise, or a bitmap bump / displacement to replicate the wrinkles you get with leather, or model that in as geometry.

Here's a cellular texture, a noise, and then combining the two with a mix.

And here's the final result...

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