I took a break last week and made my first can cooler with an inlay. This first one was made using a hand-stitched monogram design in red and black. The leather used here was from a sheet of Patch Crafter's Bison Brown that I originally purchased to use for hat patches.
I am still working out a few adjustments to the final dimensions, but I am quite happy with how this one turned out. And, since it is an R monogram, I went ahead and claimed it.
I made a few adjustments to the can cooler dimensions and cut another one using the same leather as before. The two biggest changes that I made were to adjust for the additional thickness of the inlay panel and to try a machine-embroidered inlay.
Functionally, the original one works well, but the second one is MUCH easier to load and unload cans. Aesthetically, I think they are very close, though I do favor the hand-stitching. Really, it's hard for me to make that call since I'm the hand-stitcher. I would love to hear what y'all think. If it feeds your need for comparison, it took about a solid day of stitch time to do just the cross-stitching of the monogrammed one. It took about an hour of file editing and 15 minutes of stitching for the paw. Hand-stitching the can sleeves is a little easier for the hand-stitched, but I could not quantify a time difference just yet.
Tall-boy and slim-can options are also available. Leatherette options are also available.
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