Does Leather Work Keep You Up At Night?

[Redochre]

Does anyone else lay awake at night trying to figure out how to construct something or find a solution to a problem you hit on the bench?

If so what's the best break through you've had?

I sometimes go through the motions in my head too, just laying there in the dark, mentally practising my stitching, visualising the sequence.

The funny thing is I'm not even that good... Yet.

[Chief Filipino]

I haven't sat up thinking about it at night but I have stayed up way too late trying to work through the problem. I've found the best thing for me to do is to make it out of paper/cardboard first as a real life mock up to help me spot some issues I might encounter. However paper is not as thick as leather so there are times when my measurements haven't been as exact as I would like.

[Art]

Unfortunately for me, and probably a few others, when I hit the groove, or the glue hits me, I am productive. That means when I start, I continue till I finish or just start making mistakes. When I turn the clicker on, I'm going to click everything I need. Anything with a hydraulic pump makes enough noise to keep everyone awake, except the wife who can drown out the clicker. Now, there is nobody to worry about but the wife, so you know.

Art

[Art]

Oh, and if there is no leatherwork to do, Single Malt helps, and/or any Al Stohlman book or a George Hurst video will send you to LA LA land.

Art

[billybopp]

+1 for single malt. It doesn't stop thinking about leatherwork, but it does make it more enjoyable.

Bill

[Tugadude]

Had some 12 year old Macallan recently. Good stuff! I don't lay awake at night thinking about leather issues, but I tend to surf for lots of examples of things I want to make and frequently very late at night. Or morning, as will be the case tonight.

[keplerts]

Yes, leather work does keep up laying awake in bed quit often. One night I figured out how I was going to stitch an arrow quiver together end to end with a toe plug. Did it by hand. Wished I could just sleep though.

[LumpenDoodle2]

Don't know about lying awake at night, but I've always found that mentally going through the steps of an upcoming job, or project, seems to make the actual process go smoother.

I'm also a great believer in having a lie down if I can't sort a problem out. That little space between awake and sleep just seems to open the imagination up. (Good excuse for a day time nap too.)

[LeatherNerd]

If I can't sleep, I get out of bed. Bed is for sleep, not for lying awake. If I'm totally wrapped around the axle with leatherwork, I'll get up and go do some leatherwork. (The quieter stuff, anyway, because marriage and stuff.) Yes I have some rough mornings where I reeeaaally pay for it, but I've found that paying for it in full a few times really does motivate me to tell my brain "yes, this is fascinating, but do we really want to pay for this in the morning, or sleep now and pick this back up in the morning?" As I get older, my brain lets go more and more easily. I usually have amazing ideas in the shower the next morning because I'll have been dreaming about it all night.

I often have ideas as I'm falling asleep, and then I stay awake worrying that I'll forget. I can't count how many mornings I've woken up remembering that I had a GREAT idea last night... but not what the idea itself WAS. So the next time I have an idea, I lay there, fretting that I'll lose it. The solution here is staggeringly simple: notepad and pen by the bed. Reach over, write it down, drop the pen, fall asleep.

All my nighttime breakthroughs have been really weird--err, I mean highly creative--like "surfacing" the entire backside of a 3x5" piece of leather with about nine coats of edge paint to completely cover the stitching. The really hard geometric puzzles, like building a box case with multiple compartments inside it out of a single piece of leather, and figuring out how to "unfold" the box to get a flat, one-piece pattern, I generally have to be fully awake and sketching in my journal for.