Chartreuse was from scraps I took from an industrial sewing classmate, playing with my new thread colors with a retro swoopy thing.
The light pink is i think 5-6 oz, making slippers for my friend (who is also our dungeon master for DnD).
just glued scrap on as my soles, but over a veg tan insole, planning to do the same for hers
Cool vamp stitching!
I’ve also never done a nice rolled/folded top line so i was gonna try that on hers as well. Unlined because it’s nice and soft on the inside, and thicker.
I really like having a bone folder, wood laying tool, or a chopstick handy for rolling edges. Especially around curves.
You can definitely do it!
wow, I forgot to add more photos! I did not actually like how folding over the top line went. I thought because it was so nice and soft on the skin side that I should let the slipper be unlined and it would be a nice detail, but it’s not really the same as whatever you call the nicer top on boots. That said, i think i got very good at drawing a 20 sided die and doing some colorful sewing (the very simple kind)
I also tried remaking the slippers for myself as outdoor-appropriate slip ons, but i have no idea where the lasting allowance went. Also i’m clearly not good at translating 2D images onto a 3Dshoe yet. This is a pull-up leather I haven’t used before, and the glasses are all scraps from some glass calf from the now retired Mr. Loy in Texas.
Terminology here is very loose. Don’t mistake me for the word police! I’m more a Robber than a Cop in that game.
I’ve done rolled edges, a.k.a folded edges, a.k.a. turned edges, on nearly all the uppers I’ve done so far. But they were always lined, even in the quarters. I suppose it’s perfectly logical to skive, turn the edges over, and just sew flesh to flesh through the outside of the upper. But I imagine the effect could be a little unusual or unfinished seeming.
I’m not quite sure what alternative you meant. But one you could have is often called a French edge, a.k.a. French binding, a.k.a. rolled top. My notes page has a diagram for that style, too. My category page for upper edge finishes has a couple others. The Swaysland book that was shared here as PDF has a very systematic chapter on them.
How did you make your pattern?
Everybody’s different, but I personally had really pleasing results diving in with the last taping method, originally to create a mean form to pattern on in 2D, and more recently as a canvas to draw on in 3D. Highly recommend giving that a shot.
I already had a mean forme for this last, and made my first pair of shoes ever on it (black and white derbies with rand/false welt). So I basically looked at the shoes and their pattern, picked a couple heights to play with (one that went about to the toe crack line like a ballet flat, one with this little smoking loafer tongue) and drew based on that. I think both came out pretty well for their styles, I forgot to photograph the ballet flat style though.
I intended these to be my casual errand runners and do weird experiments with them, and I was curious what this extra chonky Vibram outsole sheet would feel like if it was the main outsole layer instead of the bottom of a hefty stack of outsoling leather. So I skipped a shank and just filled in the area with scraps (this is what I usually do to fill in around the shank, incidentally, I’ve never even tried cork), slapped another layer of the leather I used for the insole on for midsole, then the Vibram. I still have to pop some heels on them to match the rise the last expects, and sand the edges etc…but I was itching to get them off the lasts and see if the intense difficulty lasting them, particularly around the toe, was all in my head and I somehow didn’t know how to cut a pattern twice. Based on where the tongue hits, definitely seems like that’s where the allowance went. Learned my lesson about why you use thin kangaroo leather and not big stiff scraps of 3oz calf! This purple is also 3.5/4oz and whatever scrap I used for the house slipper looks like 2-3oz?
This sole is absolutely wild feeling, stiff in a way I don’t assume will break in well, now I know why I would not do a bizarre combo like this again (I have thinner outsoling that would have made much more sense, I just wanted to try The New And Different Sheet). Excited to beat em up this summer!
I’ll send pictures of the derbies when I finish redoing the soles…I absolutely hate sanding time so I had left a real wide band of false welt all around it. Now that it’s been a couple years and my eyes have adjusted more to things like that, it was really bothering me (I hadn’t really been wearing them anyway, the white makes me nervous). So I took them out to the sander and nipped it in much tighter and I like how it looks, so I have to hand sand it down and re-dye the edges red.
Cool shoes!
Do you know which Vibram outsole you used? I couldn’t tell from the photos.
It’s the 7166Q, 15 iron (again from Montana Leather)
I’ve only ever seen 7166 recommended for cutting top lifts, but I’m sure there’s no harm in using it for soles, as well.
15 iron is just a bit thicker than some other common Vibram soles made of SBR. The 700 is 14 iron, for example. So is the 430, with very shallow lugs.
I’d just give them time. SBR usually takes a few wears.
