New Season - New Shoes

I really do love making my own shoes, but my one main problem is that they don't last long.  It's great that I get a lot of new shoes, but it can be a bit annoying when the old ones fall apart before I've grown bored of them.

Anyway a new season is starting so of course I need a new pair of shoes.  My last pair have already worn through at the balls of the feet -and they were only made in September and haven't been worn much during the winter.  So I decided that I need to look into using a more durable sole for my next pair.

Carolyn from Handmade by Caroline has been into making shoes lately and I've been reading up on how she does it and got a few really good tips that I wanted to try out.

As I wanted a slightly different style this time around I decided to start from scratch and use the duct tape idea as detailed by Carolyn to make a new pattern.

I put on a shoe that I like the shape of, put a plastic bag over it and then duct taped over the entire thing.  Once the entire foot was covered in duct tape I used a sharpie to mark the pattern that I wanted.  I traced around where the sole meets the top of the shoe, outlined where I wanted the top edge of my new shoe to sit and then a few design lines where I wanted the seams of my new shoes.

I was then able to wiggle my foot out of the shoe, and carefully wriggle the shoe out of the plastic bag.  I cut around each of my drawn lines to give me a pattern for the new shoe.

These pieces were then traced onto cardboard and seam allowances added to create the final pattern.  For the basic seams on the top of the shoe I added a basic 1/4" seam allowance, and where the shoe upper meets the sole I added a 5/8" seam allowance.

This technique worked fairly well, but as I was taping over another pair of shoes the pattern came out a little bit too big and I ended up having to cut it down a bit. I made one shoe and had to do quite a bit of tweaking with it to get it to fit, so when I went to make the next shoe I made two and kept the first as a test.

My plan for this shoe was to have a two toned design.  I cut the toe, heel and tongue pieces out of the purple corduroy fabric and the side pieces from a contrasting aqua blue corduroy. During construction I added another heel piece in the contrasting fabric.

I cut two of each piece for each foot so that the shoe is fully lined on the inside.

I sewed the heel piece to the right and left sides down the side seams for both the outer and inner layers, Each seam was then finger pressed open and top stitched in place.  I sewed the two layers together up the middle and around the top, turned them right side out and top stitched everything with two rows of top stitching.

At this point I decided that I wanted to stiffen the heels a little so I cut a curved  piece out of a yoghurt carton.  This is the best stuff, it already has the right sort of curve in it, and it's thick enough to stiffen, but thin enough that my sewing machine can happily sew through it.  I cut a piece of contrasting fabric to fit over the top of the plastic, turned the edges of the fabric under the plastic along the top side.and top stitched it in place.

The top toe piece was sewn to the front of the right and left side piece, the tongue was sewed in place and finally the lower layer of the toe so that all seams are encased inside the shoes.

To finish the inside of the shoe, I found a piece of blue mystery fabric and cut it to the shape of the sole plus a 5/8" seam allowance.   This piece was then basted to the bottom of the upper shoe.

To make the inner sole I used the foam door hangers from my kids craft supplies cut to the shape of the sole - no seam allowances.

Once the soles and uppers were made it was time to join them together.  I tried just wrapping the fabric around the innersole and glueing it to the underside, but it was hard to hold all the layers in place.  In the end I ended up hand sewing the two edges of the uppers together across the sole which worked very well.

Then finally it was time to put on the outer sole.  This was made from some rubber base board material I found at the local hardware store.  It comes in strips about 4 inches wide, has a texture on one side and is smooth on the other.  I decided that the textured side would be good as the outside of the sole to provide some grip, and the smooth side could then be glued to the shoe upper.  I used contact cement and applied glue to both the rubber and the underside of the shoe and allowed it to dry for 15 mins the joined the two pieces together.  Pegs were used right around the edges to hold everything together overnight whilst it dried completely.

The last step was figuring out how to keep the shoes on my feet.  The original plan was to put eyelets down the middle front and lace them up but I forgot to do any interfacing and I was worried about the eyelets pulling straight out - which is what happened last time I tried using them.  Plus I wanted to wear them straight away so I ended up just making two little strips of the purple corduroy and using some purple snaps on each side.

It's not the most beautiful finish, but it'll work for the time being.

Unfortunately I don't think these shoes are going to last very long either.  I didn't cut the heel area of the sole big enough so after just a couple of wears they already look like this.

So I think I'll leave this pair as is - wear them till they fall apart and then try again.  I think this technique worked well - it just needs a little tweak.