Apple Watch SE custom watch face edits on iPhone not saving

I’ve been having this problem with my second gen SE watch for a long time. Even after updating it to watch iOS 26.1, it still persists. When I try to edit a custom watch on the phone (iO 26.1), the changes are not saved. When I first got the watch, I created a custom face that I liked using one of my images, and later I tried to tweak it a little bit, as a complication suddenly stopped displaying. When I went to edit it, the phone created a duplicate, and lost the cropping, but I could never edit the duplicate and save it.

When I use phone and adjusted the crop, and saved it, and it shows that it has saved it. Then I tried to change the size and location of the time display (small/bottom), and it shows it has saved it, but then when I exit, it reverts back to the old crop on the image. If I go back into it to try to readjust the crop, the time display defaults back to medium/bottom, instead of the small bottom as I had it set.

On the watch, I can only edit the time font style, but not the crop.

I also cannot re-create the same look of the font that I have in my originally saved watch – it’s was much more delicate and refined than the thick one version (of Modern) I can use today.