The leather was best where the hide had folded in life. The belly, the neck, the crease behind the foreleg — wherever the animal had moved and bent. The flat panels from the back were uniform, easy to grade, sold for the most. Tanners preferred them.
She preferred the neck.
The grain ran tighter in one direction, looser in another. It remembered the shape of the living animal. When she worked it, she had to follow the grain's bias rather than impose her own geometry. A straight line cut against the neck's architecture would pucker at the edges. You had to read it first.
Her customers sometimes complained about asymmetry. She'd learned to say character instead of explaining. The explanation would have been longer than the bag.