Black Leather and Plaid: A love story

This is the first longstitch book I'll be offering for sale on my Etsy. I'm pretty excited about it because I think it's a great book, and I've solved a couple of problems with this one.

Problem number one: Recycled leather
I would say that the leather I've been using has been great quality, it's just recycled from coats and purses. Coat and purse leather is usually lined with material that may or may not come completely off of the back of the leather. As I have dismantled perfectly good coats and purses, I have found that there is often times sticky residue, or the leather just wasn't made to have it's back side being shown off or rubbing against paper.
Solution: Back the leather with fabric

When I replenished my supply of heat n' bond the other day for making book cloth, I noticed on the package that it said it could be fused to all sorts of things, including leather. I thought that was nifty, then forgot about it until I visited KarleighJae's etsy. She sells some beautiful books, and I noticed that some of them were lined with fabric. I wondered, "How does she do that?" and then 'DING!' duh! heat n' bond!
I wasn't positive, but I decided to try it out. It also helped that KarleighJae had a great video tutorial on how to iron leather.

At first, I didn't think it was working. The corners were peeling off, and it just didn't look like it was sticking. Then I realized my iron had turned itself off (which it does as a safety feature every half an hour). Once I got it back up to heat, it seemed to be doing a lot better (imagine that). I was also immensely pleased when I was trimming the leather later and found it very hard to tear the fabric from the leather. It was possible, but it required a conscious effort.

Then, I had a fear of the edges fraying. They were fine now, but what about two weeks later, after it had been jostled about in a purse or something? I solved this problem by "painting" the edges with gloss medium. The stuff you use with paint to make it shiny. Not the most orthodox approach, I'm sure, but it effectively ceases the fraying, and is not visible unless you look for it.

Problem two: Thick books = a lot of holes
I like books with girth. If I want a girthy longstitch book, I have to punch a lot of holes, right? Punching holes is a pain, especially since I struggle with right angles/ lining paper up to a piece of leather. This book has 11 signatures. There's no way I wanted to punch that many holes, so I only made holes for five. I sewed in the first five signatures, then went back and sewed in the other 6 using the same holes. I feel pretty awesome right now. I think it looks pretty cool, and it solved my problem of not wanting to make any more holes than necessary. The cool thing is, I don't even have to do that. I can just sew under the signatures that are already in place if I want to sew more in. Ya, I know, I'm groovy.

So, that's the book. I sewed a button onto the front so it could have a pretty little button closure. The strap was some leftover material I had, so it worked out perfectly. I think the button and the thread coordinate nicely with the colors of the plaid.