Leather penguin

Posted by Marcus Folkesson on Friday, October 16, 2020

Leather penguin

A Linux guy needs his penguin, right?

I found this pattern [1] on etsy and thought it would be a fun project to make a little companion.

The leather I'm using for this is a 2-3oz veg-tanned goat skin. It is a little too thin to make a robust penguin, but I rather want it soft and squeeze-friendly than robust. That's how I prefer to have my companions.

The steps

Print out the pattern and tape to the leather. Punch the holes before cutting:

/media/leatherpenguin-1.jpg

Cut out all parts:

/media/leatherpenguin-2.jpg

Time to dye! Yellow feets and neb. Other colored parts will be black:

/media/leatherpenguin-3.jpg

I use white waxed linen thread that I dye for the feets and neb.

/media/leatherpenguin-4.jpg

The penguin does already looks happy :-) :

/media/leatherpenguin-5.jpg

The rest is to stitch all parts together.

/media/leatherpenguin-6.jpg

Before I finished sewing everything, I stuffed it with cotton and a big glass ball to give it some weight.

/media/leatherpenguin-7.jpg

The result

/media/leatherpenguin-8.jpg

And yes. Penguins need their hat.

Things to improve

Dye both sides of the leather. In this project I did only dye the top grain leather. Some of the holes are not dyed completely.

Use round punch instead of diamond, it would have been much easier to sew.