Well, it's Not A Complete Disaster

[Gosut]

The vinegaroon worked beautifully. The M&G did as well. It's my stitching that stinks.

I had a gray thread on hand that I thought would work well. Not top name, but good enough. It was passable, but the light gray against black highlighted every flaw, and there were plenty of them. The first I noticed was stitching up the checkbook cover. I had given it three coats of a 50/50 solution of M&G and water, and had set the holes prior to the vinegaroon. There was enough acrylic in the holes that I had to run a regular awl through them, but i can't blame the stitching on that. The punch side wasn't so bad. The underside, though, had several places out of line. Honestly, I didn't do that bad on my first project.

The leather pouch for a whetrock was worse. Okay, so it was simply to protect a small hard Arkansas stone, and only tried dyeing it as a test. Instead of M&G, I stopped after my usual two light applications of neatsfoot oil. Once again, used the gray thread. The stitching is horrible, the worst I've ever done. The pouch was tight and I cased it to fit the stone, but had punched the holes first because precisely because I feared I couldn't keep them aligned.

How bad are they? I had planned to photograph and post on the board because of how well the vinegaroon turned out, but the stitching on both are so bad I'm ashamed to show them in public.

Sigh.

I thought we were supposed to get getter with experience. I know the problem was in the angle of the chisel, but I though I had this down.

The best thing I can say is neither one were gifts. No one has to see them.