Omit leading 0 in char and append

Omit leading 0 in char and append

Say I have these 8 bit chars:
01111111 00011100 01101111
I want to omit the leading 0 and append the bits from char before like so:
11111110 01110011 01111000
*note that the last char has been padded with zeros.
Any advice on how to do this would be much appreciated. cheers.