Carolina Wren

I really enjoy carving leather myself, but I also enjoy seeing what other people do with leather. Kate Dubiel is someone who's work always impresses me. There is just something about her "style" that always catches my eye. Earlier this year she shared a picture of this Carolina wren that she carved on a clock. This little bird looks so neat the way she carved and colored it, and I thought it would be neat to try it in my style. Kate was kind enough to share her pattern with me and said she would like to see what I did with the pattern.









As I carved this bird, I took pictures and wrote up a step by step lesson on the process. I posted this as a lesson on the internet and you can see it here on my website. I entered the completed picture in the Prairie States Leather Guild's spring show where it took a first place ribbon, and a best of catagory.






Clay Miller, who manages the Tandy Leather store in Rapid City, SD has been after me to teach a class at his store for quite awhile now and he thought this would be a good project for the class. I really want to be prepared if I am going to do something like this, so last weekend I carved this wren again, just to make sure I could, and to have some idea of how long it might take in a class. The second one turned out pretty good too, so I decided to go for it. We've picked the 24th and 25th of July as the date for this, my first real live leather class.

I'd really like to thank Kate for inspiring me to try something new and a little different and for sharing her pattern for this project. Kate's been a good friend for several years now. Along with being a talented leather artist, Kate is also a web designer/developer. If you're ever in the market to have a website built, drop her a note at
kate@katherinelouise.biz and see what she might be able to do for you. Oh, and check out some more of her work on her Etsy site.