Sewing a leather journal took me six weekends, not six hours

I saw all these videos online of people hand stitching leather covers in an afternoon and figured I could do the same. My first real attempt at a leather journal with a coptic stitch turned into a total mess. The thread kept tangling, my holes were off by a millimeter on every signature, and the cover ended up crooked. It took me six weekends of redoing the same book before it looked halfway decent. Turns out most of those fast tutorials skip all the setup and the practice runs that actually take the time. My hands still hurt from punching those holes through two layers of veg tan. Has anyone else had a project that took way longer than the internet made it seem?

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abbyhall16d ago

That "six weekends" line hits hard. I've had plenty of projects where the internet made it look like a weekend job and it turned into a month of redoing the same mistakes.