Kinusaiga Craft Kit: Winter Penguin, 5" × 5"

A 5" × 5" kinusaiga kit, start to finish. The penguin pattern comes printed on the adhesive sheet, already mounted on the foam board. Step one is cutting the grooves along those lines with the small craft knife we put in the box, and the card walks you through it.

One promise from you: use the fabric included and make it your own, don't try to match the photo here. Deal?

Kinusaiga is a Japanese fabric art that looks like quilting with none of the sewing. Once the grooves are cut, you peel the paper back from one section at a time, use that scrap as a template to cut your fabric, press the piece onto the exposed adhesive, and tuck the edges down into the grooves. The picture fills in one shape at a time.

A penguin bundled up for the cold in a red hat with a polka dot brim and a scarf to match, sitting on a snowbank. The hat, scarf and body are each their own sections, so the outfit is where you can swap in whatever red and green you like best. The box has four black glass pin eyes for the finishing touch, two for the penguin and two spares in case one rolls under the couch, and they give the penguin a little shine you can't get from fabric. Small enough to finish in an evening, and it hangs from its rope loop on a door, a tree or a nail.

Inside the box: the printed board, a small craft knife for the grooves, fabric swatches for every section of the design and then some, a seam ripper for tucking (used flat back down, which is the best tool we've found for it), four black glass pin eyes (two for the penguin, two spares), a shadowbox the finished piece pushes into, and a card with the steps on it.

About the fabric: yours will be close to what's pictured, and the colors will be very close, but the exact prints and the mix change with what we can keep in stock, so the photo is the idea rather than a promise. We pack extra swatches so you can make it your own, and no two kits come out quite the same.

You'll need scissors. That's the one thing we didn't put in the box, since you already own a pair. A pen is handy too if you'd rather trace a template than cut around it. The craft knife is sharp and the eyes are on pins, so if kids are at the table the cutting and the eyes are the grown-up's steps.

No needles, no glue, nothing to plug in. It's an afternoon at the kitchen table, give or take, and it hangs on a wall or sits on a shelf when you're done.

Want another design? Here are all our kinusaiga kits.