I counted how many strings I needed, used 10 strings total, so I used 4 white and 1 red)cut them twice as long, folded in half for the loop. I made the loop kind of fancy by making a buckle instead of just making a knot with the loop, clipped it to a binder & started. I made the1st row extra snug.
Probably longer than the average person. I want to say probably close to 12 hours, but I'm not fast and had a few other complications that came up. >.<