Being Mr. Project Manager (no, just project manager)

before/after

Yesterday I felt creative. One of my leather bags has a small tear on one side, and it was really becoming too difficult to ignore. Since I literally have never done any needlework/stitching in my life, I thought it an apt occasion to begin to try and learn. The image – to the right, here – shows how bad it looked, and for some reason I felt like it would be easy to mend. How wrong I was.

The string they use to stitch the leather together is so incredibly feeble that, when I attempted to push the needle out back through the leather hole, SNAP! Near impossible with no experience, so naturally I switched to fishing wire. Off went the string they used, and in went the clear little thread of steel. It was thin, but still a tad larger than what those holes were make for. Fortunately it was stronger than any thread I’d find and I eventually found a rhythm in stitching through three holes with a thimble, pulling the needle out with my teeth, tightening my string, and making knots to finish the job. They’re hidden here, but I took a hot metal object (some sort of tool, I really don’t know what it was to be honest), heated it up over a candle, and seared my knots so they’d look less like knots and more like tiny plastic pancakes, which is sort of what they look like now. Voilà! My bag is fixed, and I am proud of myself for saving money by not getting it professionally done, but moreover I’m impressed at the work my hands can do with a little fishing line, a needle, my teeth and some fire.