put a cork in it

I finally got to work on the cork for my brown bottle. I set it down weeks ago in frustration, and the time away from it paid off. I had already created the guts out of wool felt dyed with black walnuts rolled into a tight, tapered cylinder. I’d also cut out the kid leather (from an old glove) to encase the wool, but was stumped at how to hold it together neatly with out creating bulky areas.

The first cork I made I glued the kid together rather than stitching it. Even though the glue held it together, it didn’t look finished. For this new cork, I fell back on my old standby-blanket stitch. I stitched the ends on, and the side piece to one end, but was dismayed by the seam allowance of kid showing through the holes.
 

 Hmmm, how about adding another layer of felt inside the kid, over the seam allowance? I pulled back the cylinder to expose the wool and add another layer:

Well, as you can see, it added too much bulk, distorted the smaller end, and also used up all the extra material on the sides which I needed to sew up the wider end. I ended up adding just a thin strip of wool a bit wider than the pesky seam allowance, trimmed down on the wider edge so it would taper into the rest of the wool insides with out creating a bump. It worked! The finished cork is 2.5” long x 1.75” wide.

 I also went back to the first cork and stitched it up. It looks much better, more resolved.