The starting point here is lovely: a third wedding anniversary, which tradition says calls for leather, and a wife who is serious about her tea. Put those together and a holster for a teacup becomes the obvious gift, and the maker went all in on the idea.
The build started with a curved paper pattern, which was then redrawn as vectors in Inkscape. The material is 5-6oz vegetable tan, hand cut with a Japanese-style skiving knife and a folding utility knife. Floral scrollwork was stamped in with hand tooling stamps and beveled, and the edges were beveled and skived thin before assembly on a walking-foot leather machine, with some sections sewn by hand. Brass rivets close the overlapping strap joints, hammered over a steel anvil block.
The finish is where my eye lingers. Fiebing's Mahogany dye gives a rich base, antique resist goes over the top, and Tokonole burnishing gum was fingered onto the exposed multi-layer edges and friction-rubbed with undyed duck canvas. The maker found that canvas worked better than a dedicated burnishing tool already sitting in the kit, which I admire as a bit of honest experimenting. The result holds a porcelain cup inverted above its saucer under a buckled leather harness, and the wife is happy with it.
One thread is still open: the maker admits to learning plenty of wrong ways along the way and is not convinced Inkscape is the best pattern software out there, and is happy to hear alternatives. Given how clean the drafted shapes came out, whatever comes next should be worth watching.