I’ve made some new shoes!
These have had a bit of a journey in the making, with a gap of about five months in the middle of it when I did absolutely nothing to them! Several things; feeling torn as to the colour I’d chosen, as well as a little overwhelmed with the thought of actually finishing them, when it was actually all pretty quick and simple and painless once I got over that…
So obviously, they’re black. However! my original plan back in December of last year was to make some two-tone saddle shoes. I cut out my pieces using the same beige upholstery suede that these shoes are made in, and dyed the pieces respectively caramel brown and “black”, though the latter turned out to be more of a deep charcoal really.
I thought the combo would be pretty cool… but once I’d formed them on the lasts and it came time to sole and add heels, I was starting to go off the saddle idea already.
I already suspected that what I really wanted was for some plain black heeled oxfords in my shoe collection… but it was summer at the time, too hot for winter shoes to be a tempting project anyway, and truthfully? Christmas had exhausted me a bit and it just all seemed too hard, so I just chucked the half-made shoes into a drawer and basically didn’t touch them again for the next five months…
Fastforward to last week; winter has started to creep in with cold, probing tentacles, and with it the need for warm shoes. I got the half-made saddles out of the drawer where they’d lain, idle and ignored, and re-assessed. Carving the heels was the next step, that had been such a stumbling block to me, and really? it’s not that hard of a one. I bought some wood from Bunnings, got Craig to help me set up the sander on the triton, and sanded myself some heels… hilariously to me, after all that procrastination it took about an hour, tops! Soled my shoes, glued and nailed on the heels.
oh hey Clara!! and NO, lovely girl…. these are NOT for eating!
I painted the heels with a coat of black satin enamel paint. I probably should have just painted the whole shoes themselves at this point too, but I still had that tiny shred of uncertainty that I might still want saddles …? but nope. Seeing the heels painted a beautiful pure black made the dyed suede look quite muddily unattractive, banishing all doubt. I went right ahead and did a few more coats taking in the whole shoe, using the same black enamel paint. Bunged in a foam insert, covered with the same chocolate brown suedette that I’d used to line the uppers, and FINALLY FINITO.
I’ve worn them four days straight already! A coupla times they’ve got drenched in the pouring rain… in the past this would have filled me with horror but nowadays I have more confidence in the strength and durability, and importantly the waterproof-ness of my shoes! and of course they’ve held up beautifully. Seriously, I’m totally chuffed! could not be any happier with them!!
Having said that, well of course theoretically I could actually be happier… they’re not perfect and I can certainly see little bits that I could have done better. But with each and every pair of shoes I really do feel like I’m improving – to see my shoe-making journey, it’s all here under the tag “shoes” – and these ones are very satisfying to me. They are exactly what I want to wear right now!
This is how I wore them for their maiden voyage… out to lunch on Friday with my friend J, and then later on to book club with a larger group of my friends… I felt pretty cool and chic! No one asked me if I’d made my shoes! which means any one of three things; they look OK enough to pass for rtw (yay!) or SO bad that people are just too embarrassed to say anything (not-so yay). The third and most likely option is that no one actually noticed them. I’m ok with that option, to be honest 😉
Details:
Dress; V1351, floral chiffon, details here
Cardigan; the Miette, a free pattern by Andi Satterlund, all details here
Tights; my own pattern, details here, and my tutorial for making your own custom-fit tights pattern is here
Shoes… MADE BY ME!!!!!
SO, while I’m here and writing stuff… I’ve been making some other things lately too, that I haven’t got around to mentioning so far.
I discovered this pattern for little sockettes that you wear with ballerina flats; the Sytt & Prytt Florens Ballerina Socks, designed by Lena Lundvall. I found this through a mention from someone doing me-made May on instagram, though for the life of me I cannot remember who it was.. so if that person is reading this then I’m sorry not to give credit! Anyway, I looked up the Sytt & Prytt Etsy shop and bought the pattern.
This blue pair is made up exactly to the pattern; my toes are covered… JUST
It’s a super quick and extremely easy thing to make, though I altered the pattern somewhat to make them exactly what I wanted… specifically, the socks as they are quite “skimpy”. To be fair, I think this coverage is perfectly adequate if you’re wearing them with ballet flats, which is totally what they are designed for. However, for me personally, I’m really so not a ballet flat person, and I wanted to wear them with my oxford shoes, that have higher sides and cover the top of my foot too, and so I wanted my sockettes to have more foot coverage too.
I wanted EXTRAAAA!!!
Adding on a good inch nearly all the way around and reducing the elastic length gave me this! much better suited to the kind of shoes I wear.
my white oxford shoes, blogged here
I made nine pairs overall, including my trials runs, which I’m still going to wear, ‘cos it’s not like anyone can see the less-than wonderful ones in situ. With the exception of the white ones, which is fresh fabric, the others are all made from old Tshirts.
Thanks for helping me with my pictures, Clara!! xxx
And finally… !
I made a toiletries bag for a friend for her birthday, using the dopp kit pattern from the Grainline Portside Travel set… I’ve made quite a few of these, see my previous versions here. The cool crackle print is cotton canvas hand painted in Zambia, I bought it at the Fabric Store in Melbourne during my holiday there with Mum and Cassie, and made a skirt for Cassie for Christmas. This is the very last of it!
I lined it fully with plastic waterproof stuff from Spotlight, and made little zip pulls for fun, using beads and earring wires leftover from my jewellery making days. I think it turned out pretty cute, and my friend professed herself very happy with it too 🙂
Confession time: I actually started recording YouTube videos to document the process of making these shoes, and basically gave up on that halfway because I truly lost heart a few times and felt like my shoes were never going to happen. Likewise, I didn’t take many actual photos during the making of them either! the ones in this post here are basically all of them… But I’m so glad I persisted in the end (minus the stress of filming myself) and have finally limped in to the finish line. I’ll make another YouTube video, some other time, on some other shoes.
This is actually the second Sudley I have made. I also made a dress that has now been assigned to Cassie when I realised it was just going to be a little too, er, young for me. I expect it’ll show up on ye olde blog here sometime…
I also cut the lower hemline to have a curved “shirttail” line to it. The hems and the neckline are all finished by hand, because I really wanted to have a smooth clean stitch-free expanse of fabric with absolutely no visible topstitching anywhere. This is about as invisible as I could get.
Hello! I’ve finally finished these black leather clogs; that have been on the go for nearly a whole year now…. eeeeek!!
The last time I went down to visit Mum and Dad: Dad had some pinewood he’d cut himself from a “weed” pine on their block… and he very kindly helped me to shape the blocks on his bandsaw, and have the use of his sander to do some further shaping while I was down there… I’m so lucky that Dad has all the perfect equipment for this!
Once I got home, I sanded down the soles even further, stuck some cork to the bottom and the heels, and applied five coats of satin varnish. Ohhh, wait, getting ahead of myself… before that, I’d fancied the idea of a nice deep, chocolate brown wood, I thought it would play off nicely against my chosen black leather. So I bought some walnut stain and gave them a coat. They looked um, not good, but I persisted (“maybe they just need MORE of it” famous last words) and did a few more coats. Then they looked DREADFUL. A day or so of deep depression later, and I’d regained the energy to set up the sander again and sand it all off. THEN I did the soling/ varnishing thing to my clean, new soles. *sigh* Lesson learned; wood looks better in its natural colour.
The bottom layer is thin cork-covered, contact paper, cut to size, stuck on – more liquid nails, yo!! and then three layers of clear, enamel varnish to seal and strengthen.
Uppers: this particular vinyl has that very rubbery texture which sticks to the presser foot, leading to horribly uneven stitches. I usually use a strip of tissue paper to facilitate the vinyl going evenly through the machine; but these strips are really really skinny, wonky stitching would stand out a mile and I wanted to get the topstitching perfectly even in appearance, and you can’t see through tissue paper so it just wasn’t going to cut it this time. I found though, that by turning the vinyl upside down it all worked out quite smooth and fairly easy to sew.
A bit of faffing about with strips and I finally settled upon a nice simple, multi-strapped design, cut a denim “inner sole” piece and zigzagged all the strips to this underneath the echo-panel layer, to anchor them securely into position inside the sandal. This denim inner sole is sandwiched between, and securely glued to the echo-panel above and the cork sole below. So it’s not visible in the final sandal, also, none of those strips is in danger of pulling out!
I toyed with the idea of leaving the echo-panel showing on the edge, but its woolliness actually picks up every stray hair and twig, and the white shows like every smudge, and I decided a smooth, dark edge would be less of a headache. More sensible, hides the dirt, you know. I cut and glued on a nice evenly cut strip of dark denim to the outside edge, pinning in a few strategic places where the denim didn’t instantly stick to the inner curves of the sole. Those pins can just be seen in the picture below; I sort of thought they would be a temporary measure until the glue dried, however they got pretty firmly glued in themselves and proved impossible to get out! so I’ve left them in there. After this picture was taken I went back and touched them all up with a dob of black paint so now they’re invisible. And, then they were further sealed in with several coats of varnish over the denim, so they’re pretty secure. I don’t think I have to worry that they’ll ever come out 🙂
The soles are cut from rubber sheeting, from Bunnings. I made my own stacked heels, as usual, glued them all together with contact adhesive, and sanded them all off nice and smooth before giving them a blacking, and finally a coat of satin varnish. On some of my shoes I’ve started to varnish underneath the soles too, like I saw 
