Comfortable, cute and practical shoes.....why yes they do exist

I've been making my own shoes for a few years now as seen in all these photos, and this is only maybe half of what I've made.

My Very first pair of shoes

Version 2 of shoe pattern

Strappy version

Mum and daughter matching sandals

Winter boots take 2

Winter boots

ballet flat version

The biggest pros for making my own shoes are:

1.  The cuteness factor.   I love having shoes in great patterns and colours and finding them in stores are almost impossible.  And if I do find a pair of shoes I like in they invariably come with 5 inch heels, which leads me to point 2.

2.  Comfort.  For me comfort is a must.  I will not wear shoes that are uncomfortable no matter how cute they are.  If I could walk around all day barefooted I'd be happy, but  society says I can't, so minimalist shoes are the next best thing.  The main things I look for is a flexible sole, no heel rise and a wide toe box as I have very wide feet.

There are however a few cons that come with the homemade shoes:

1. The flexible soling material that I use wears out very fast, meaning I have to make new shoes every season.

2. The shoes are not always practical in adverse weather like rain or snow.

So as the weather is starting to cool down once again I decided it was time for another new pair of shoes.  As much as I love the bright coloured and patterned shoes, I have found that there are occasions where my shoes just don't go with the rest of my outfit, so I decided that this pair should be a bit more subdued.  I did not however want to make a plain pair of black shoes.

Rummaging through my wardrobe I found an old skirt that I made over 10 years ago and have worn probably twice in that time.  It was made from a heavy cotton fabric that is a very dark gray with black flocked velvet flowers.  I decided that the skirt could be refashioned into a much more wearable pair of shoes.

Original skirt with the shoe vamps cut out

Now whilst I've made myself many pairs of shoes over the years I don't think any two have been made from the same pattern, there's always something that I don't quite love that I think could be done better so I'm constantly tweaking the pattern. My last pair of shoes were very comfortable.

But they were a bit bulbous around the toes.  This time around I used the same pattern, but extended the toe into a point - I love me some pointy toed shoes.

There are 7 different materials I used to make these shoes.

1. The outside is the refashioned skirt material.

2. The vamp is then lined with a waterproof PUL material left over from my days of making nappies/diapers.  I added this to the shoes in an attempt to make them slightly more waterproof. They're still not going to be fully waterproof as there are all sorts of holes in the material where its been sewn, but hopefully it'll keep my feet fairly dry.

3.  Finally there is a layer of fleece left over from one of my kids clothes projects on the inside of the upper shoe for warmth and comfort.

Showing fleece and innersole material

4. On the bottom of the inside of the shoe is a heavy weight brown mystery material that I bought long ago for a halloween costume.  Its like a heavy weight super duty velvet that I hope will stand up to a lot of wear.  I've found before that when I've used fleece or cotton in this area is really wears out fast.

5. On the bottom of the sole is a special soling material that I bought off etsy (no longer available).  It is basically a heavy knit fabric to which a thin layer of rubber has been vulcanised. It can be machine sewed which I like as it means no gluing is required.

showing sole material underneath

6.  Between the outer sole and the inner sole I've put a piece of 1/4" thick craft foam.  In this case it was foam in the form of those door hangers that you find in the kids craft section.

7. I've also added silicone gel pads that I found in my local dollar shop on top of the foam, underneath the balls of my feet for extra cushioning.

I wore these for the first time today. There is a little bit of pinching around my toes doe to the point, but as the shoe stretches this will probably reduce.  The thing I love the best about these shoes at the moment is the way the toe turns up a little at the tip giving it a bit of a pixie look.

So much for no new fabric

In my post An Exercise in Frustration  that I wrote last week I mentioned that I didn't want to buy any new fabric until I had used up some of what I already have.  Well that resolution didn't last long.  I really wanted to try out the dress pattern that I had created but I couldn't find anything in my stash to make it out of.  So I promised myself that I would only buy material for one dress.......

Well I found the most beautiful fabric.

A purple satin velvet overlayed with an iridescent floral/ paisley pattern in metallic.  A quick google search tells me that this is a Manuel Canovas fabric and is supposedly a home decor fabric but since when has that stopped me.  I think it'll make either a beautiful dress, or possibly a coat so it'll get more wear.

I also found a stretchy cotton fabric with a green geometric circle pattern that I loved which will make a lovely day dress.

And just as I was heading to the cash register I found the most fantastic fabric for a jacket.  Its a vinyl material in the most beautiful iridescent teal green colour.

Ok it's probably not everyone's choice of jacket material, but long long ago I had a vinyl jacket that was just so warm and snuggly.

Vinyl Jacket doing service in Cape Bona Vista - Newfoundland

That jacket has since been retired as it was falling apart, but the moment I saw this fabric I just knew it needed to be made into a similar jacket.  Although the more I think about it the more I think of lengthening it into an A-line 3/4 length coat.  Something like this but with a zipper rather than buttons.

Like this but with a bit more flare at the bottom.

So now I just need to find a snuggly material to line it with.  I've spent some time over the last week playing around with the coat pattern that I used last year, modifying it to fit a bit better - I'll try and use that pattern again but with a few modifications.

But back to the dress that took me to the fabric store in the first place.  I decided to try out the pattern on the green geometric cotton first before cutting into the beautiful purple velvet.

I cut the fabric out exactly to the pattern I made but then had to make a few modifications.  First of all the under bust darts needed to be extended further down past the waist line.  I had originally made the dart about 10cm long below the waist, but needed to extend it to 20 cm.  The same for the back darts.  I extended them from 10cm to 20 cm down from the waist.  I cut the sleeves off just above the elbow.  At this point the dress was very close to fitting well, it was just a little loose across the shoulders.  The shoulders seemed to be too far out.  It needed to be taken in along the center line by at least an inch.  After the amount of time I spent trying to get pattern placement right I was very loath to do this, but I decided in the end that it was necessary and the dress definitely fits a lot better now that I've done it.

Speaking of pattern placement I'm not sure what I was thinking when I cut out the back.

 I got the large circle lined up beautifully, but that leaves me with twin circles  right over my butt, not the best look.

Overall I'm pretty happy with the pattern and the dress.  As far as the pattern goes, the side bust dart needs to move down a little bit, its not in quite the right place, and next time I'll move the center fold line in so I don't need to take off that extra inch down the center but other than that I'm happy.

New Car - New Car Seat covers

Don't you just love it when you go on holidays and come home to find that your car will no longer start.  Getting to spend your first day at home organising a tow truck, waiting around garage waiting rooms, spending hundreds of dollars.  Yep that's what happened to me this summer, so I finally said enoughs enough, a new car is required.  That was then followed by a month or so of research, what sort of car do I want? what exactly do I need from my car? how much is it going to cost? and last, but certainly for me at least the most important consideration - what colour will it be?

After much delibrating I finally decided to buy a new car this time rather than a second hand car, my very first brand new car, which means that, for the first time I actually get to choose the colour.  It was all rather exciting  I of course ruled out the grey, silver, black and white options - how utterly boring, and the blue option was so close to black that it was out too - which left me with red.  Sounds great, a nice bright red car, what more can you want.  Well that's easy a choice of interior colours would be nice.  Unfortunately the red car only comes with a sand interior.  Sand, thats white, or close to, just what you don't want with two kids in the car, white car seats.  So the first order of business once I picked up the new car.  A trip to the craft store for some new yard.  Car seat covers are required.

I remember growing up each time we got a new car, my mum would get out the knitting needles and knit new car seat covers.  I loved those yellow knitted car seat covers, so when I decided I needed car seat covers for the new car, rather than just going out any buying some I decided that I would make my own. I briefly thought about knitting them like my mum did, but quickly decided that crocheting would take a lot less time and effort. The colours were of course chosen by the kids.  J wanted plain red and L chose a purple blue mix.  The red yarn was a cheap acrylic bought in pound rolls. and the blue purple was red heart super saver acrylic.

It's taken me a lot longer than I thought it would to make them but the seat bases for the two front seats are done finally.

The pattern was pretty much made up as I went along.  Starting in the center I made a magic loop and 4 single crochets.  I then worked in a spiral outward increasing the number of sticths each round by making three stitches in every corner.  I started out with single crochets but as I worked my way out I then increased to double crochets and finally to triple crochets around the front.

Once my square was the size of the base at the back I then created the desired shape by only crocheting on three sides, tapering off at the end of each row.  When the flat area was the right size I then started back at the back corners and crocheted around the front three edges without the increases at the corner.  I continued in this fashion, again tapering each row off at the ends to create the desired shape.  Once I had the cover to the size I wanted I went back to the beginning of the side and made a row of single crochet stitches, over a length of rolled elastic, around the sides and front to hold the cover in place.  The elastic was pulled taught to hug the seat and the back of the cover is tucked under the back of the seat.

I still need to do another two of these for the back seats, and then I have to figure out what I want to do about the seat backs.  I'd love to crochet covers for them too but I'm already sick of this project.  I'm starting to think granny squares in the same yarn may be the way to go, then I wont have to do it all at once.

An exercise in frustration

So for the last couple of days I've been working on a project which has since come to a screeching halt. A while ago I found a piece of fabric that I loved but had no idea what to do with.  It's a heavy cotton material, definitely a bottom weight,  a deep red colour with big paisley designs all over.

I was originally thinking of making a new pair of pants, but the likelihood of me wearing a pair of red paisley pants is pretty low, and its very rare for me to wear skirts at all, so in the end I decided I would have to make a dress. I do need a winter weight, long sleeve dress and I figured that the paisley pattern of the material would work nicely as a 70s mod style dress.

I went through my meagre stash of patterns, most of which have been liberated from my mums sewing pattern stash, and found 2 patterns that were similar in style to what i wanted.

I was looking for a dress with the sleeves and neckline of the dress in pattern 1 with the shape and length of the dress in pattern 2. Unfortunately both patterns were in size 12 only, and...well.... I'm not.  In fact I'm not any size, I'm short (just 5'1"), with a big bust (DD or above depending on my weight at the moment),  but a small under bust measurement and just about no torso its so short,  in short no pattern is ever going to fit without a lot of tweaking, so I decided that it was about time I bit the bullet and made a sloper.

After much research and web browsing, I found madalynne's website and was able to follow her tutorial to create front and back bodice slopers.  The back worked perfectly first go, but I had a few issues with the front and needed to make a few modifications to her instructions, but after much fussing around and re-measuring I managed to get it to work.  I then extended the sloper into a simple A-line dress pattern. After making a basic muslin I found that, due to the size of my bust the bust dart was very large,  and was in slightly the wrong position so I  redid the sloper to position the under bust dart properly, then pivoted half the dart around to the underarm, so there's now two bust darts.  The sleeveless muslin was now sitting quite nicely, but I wanted this to be a winter dress so it was back to the drawing board to create  a sleeve sloper.  I wasn't happy with the way the sleeve head came out using Madalynne's method so after more research I lowered the sleeve head a bit and redrafted the curves based on the shape of the arm scythe, until I was happy. A quick muslin and ta-da, dress pattern complete.

It wasn't until my material was pressed and layed out on my dining room table ready to start cutting, that I hit a snag.  The placement of the pattern on the material. No matter which way I turned it, where I layed my pattern, I could not come up with one layout that didn't end up with a great big oval over my belly, or a uterus shaped paisley design right over...well my uterus.

Now I'm generally really unobservant when it comes to pattern placement, and usually need to have things like that pointed out to me, so if its so glaringly obvious even to me well, No thank you.  So I'm back where I started, only this time not only do I need to find something to do with the red paisley fabric, but now I've got to find some new material to make up the new pattern I created.

I decided to take a break for a while and instead attempted once again to tidy up my stash of fabric, with the hopes of finding something else that I can use to make the dress.  4 huge boxes of fabric later and still nothing.  I can't believe that among all that material there is not one piece that I could use to make this dress.  Well it looks like another trip to the fabric store is in order.  Why do these things always occur just after I've made the promise to myself to buy no new material until I've used up at least half the stash that I currently own?

Getting in early - A woolen wonder

So over our summer break I took the kids home to Australia to visit the grandparents and friends.  Whilst we were there my best friend took me to the Bus Depot Markets in Canberra.  I asked her before hand if there was likely to be any wool for sale there and her response was "she hadn't really noticed before"  well you can tell she's not into knitting ...it turned out that every second stall was full of the most delicious wool I've found for a long time.  I found a beautiful sock weight hand dyed merino wool in shades of greens and glitters but wasn't sure about the the price so said I would come back - only to find that by the time I got around the markets and back to the stall it was gone...That'll teach me to wiffle waffle about.  So when I found a beautiful skein of hand dyed merino super chunky in shades of turquoise and purple (the exact shade of my hair at the moment if truth be known) I decided I had to have it.  I had no idea what I was going to make it into but there was a niggling thought in the back of my mind that I needed a shrug/long sleeves to wear when its not quite cold enough for a jumper but too cold for just a shirt.

I got back to Mum and Dads house and went though mums stash of knitting needles.....unfortunately she didn't have anything large enough to deal with this super super chunky wool so up to the local craft store I went to buy a 20 cm diameter circular needle. (am I the only one whose holiday souvenirs consist of wool, fabric and notions?) and I immediately got to work.  I did a search on Ravely for the pattern I wanted and of course it wasn't there so after a quick swatch I wrote up a basic pattern and got started.....and halfway through my pattern ran out of wool.....slump....

OK I ripped it all apart and rewrote the pattern to hopefully use less wool.....and iteration #2....failed....to be ripped out again.  So iteration #3.  Surely this has got to work.... A couple of days later I finish it off.....still too short.  I could give it to my daughter.......nahhh I'm not wasting this beautiful wool on her....OK I give up.  Sleeves/shrug are not going to work with the amount of wool that I have.  At this point I gave up till I got home and had all my supplies and some time to figure out what was going on.

Once home I decided that the shrug idea just wasn't feasible so I needed something that took less wool.  Obviously a hat.  Thankfully living in this part of New England woolen hats are a necessity and I only have 1 really good one at the moment, so I decided that I would make this beautiful wool into the most snuggly, lovely hat.

A long time ago I played with the idea of making a hat and scarf in one.  That experiment didn't really work as the wool I chose was too thin to be of use in the freezing cold of an Alaskan winter.

But it was  just too much hat/scarf for the sort of temperatures that it could handle. I still really like the idea so I decided to play around with it again and see what I could come up with/had enough wool for.  I ended up with this.

 Its basically just a simple beanie knitted in the round using an existing beanie to judge when I needed a decrease row. and then a long cable knitted separately and sewed around the brim.  Halfway through the cable length, where it goes around the front and the back edges of the hat, I split the cable into two and took it from a 3x4 cable pattern (three stitches in each column twisted every 4 rows to a 2 x 2 cable pattern (2 stitches in each column twisted every second row), then joined the two sections back together at the other side of the hat

I quite like the resulting piece.  It can be worn with the edges dangling in not too bad weather,

or wrapped around as a scarf on those horrible New England mornings when I have to drag myself out of bed and take the kids to school.

Where's Waldo - why there he is!

On my last trip to my favourite fabric shop I had to take both kids with me, not my favourite way to shop. In order to make it bearable I promised the kids a piece of fabric each to be made up as they wished.  J's choice was a very cute find - a Where's Waldo fabric (except he's all over it so he's pretty easy to find).  Due to the amount left on the bolt I had to buy either 0.75 yard or 2.75 yards.  Since it was a pretty flimsy, white background cotton I figured it probably wasn't the best fabric choice for kids clothes so I just got the 0.75yards, then I had to figure out what to make from it.  J and I finally decided on a baseball cap.

I had never made one before, though I've made many sun hats but I figured how hard can it be.  I took J's favourite baseball cap and created a pattern by tracing around the pieces.  It was really just 6 triangular pieces for the crown and the rounded off rectangle for the brim.  I cut doubles of everything so it could be fully lined (that way I didn't need to figure out any finishing techniques - shhhhh, don't tell anyone but I'm a bit lazy that way).

Something went a bit wrong on the initial run, I must have added a 3/4" seam allowance to my pattern and then only sewed 1/4" or something but the crown turned out way to big.  I had to resew it twice to get it down to a reasonable size.  I was originally just going to make the hat a single size hat, but since I had all this extra width I decided to add a piece of elastic to the seam allowance of the back two triangular panels to allow for some head growth - Hopefully it'll last a bit longer this way.

To stiffen the brim I ended up using a yogurt container out of our recycling.  After cutting off the bottom of the container and the rim around the top, I was able to flatten it out and cut it to the required size and shape and when it was let go it sprang back just enough to create a perfect curve to the brim.  I was pretty proud of that piece of ingenuity!

J found a spool of spotted ribbon at the fabric store as well that he insisted had to go with the Waldo fabric, he wanted it all around the hat but I managed to talk him into just having a cross of fabric across the brim of the hat.  I was quite impressed that my sewing machine was able to easily sew through the yogurt container.

The finishing touch was a snap added to the very top of the crown to cover the join where all the pieces come together.

Stripes stripes everywhere

The last time I was at my favourite fabric store - sewfisticaed - I found this fantastic knit fabric in grey and fluro yellow stripes.  I didn't know just what I was going to use it for but I knew I needed it so I got just 1m of the fabric.  I had plans to make a dress for myself out of it, but L needed a new fall weather dress so I decided that it could go to her.  I had an image in my mind of how it was going to look, but as per usual no one pattern could  be found to make it so I made it up as I went along.

I made a muslin of the top half as that's the trickiest bit to fit and I was working from an old adult pattern I had and cutting it down to kids size.  I'm glad I did because quite a few changes were necessary.  The skirt was just a basic rectangle gathered to the bodice so that was easy but to ass interest I used the striped going in the other direction.   I had plans on doing set in pockets but in the end I went with patch pockets with the stripe on the diagonal.  The orginal neckline that I had planned was half in but flapping around and looked a bit like a collar when I tried it one for fitting one and L decided she loved the idea of a collar so a collar it was, with again the stripes going in a different direction.  And finally I trolled through my stash of buttons to find something to add visual interest down the front.  All in all I am supremely happy with how it turned out.

An intorduction

It's time to come clean.  I seem to be addicted to sewing blogs.  If I was allowed I'd probably spend all day every day reading all about the lives of other sewing enthusiasts.  I wouldn't normally worry about this, but as the time draws nearer for my smallest to start school full time I need to make sure that I don't spend all my time reading but actually get out there and do something.  So in this vein I decided to start this blog.  To hopefully keep me accountable for what I'm achieving in my "me time".

Some backgound information on me. I learnt how to sew as a young girl, from my mum of course. I did the obligatory Home Economics (aka sewing) class in high school, then through high school and uni I sewed (with my mums help of course) all those special occasion dresses that came up.  My year 10 formal, the Engineering Ball dresses at Uni, my bridesmaid dress for my sisters wedding,

But then a couple of years ago I really got the sewing bug.  I was sick of buying the kids cheap crappy clothes, I refused to pay the money for the more ethical, better made clothes, I hated being a slave to "fashion" - you can only wear these three colours this year, in this style, even if it doesn't suit you - So I pulled out the trusty sewing machine and took up sewing in earnest.

I've gotten to the point now where at least 50% of both my kids and my wardrobe is home made and I'm hoping I can get it up to 90% - I figure there was always be some things that are better off bought, but 90% should be possible.

So just to give you some background info I'll show you a couple of the more exciting pieces that I've made in the last couple of years.

One of the very first things I started making was soft soled kids shoes - My son was growing out of the store bought ones and I have this irrational hatred of thick soled shoes so I decided to try my hand at making shoes.  I found some basic patterns on the internet and then just made it up and I went along.

I then decided that I loved them so much I should try and make some of my own, and I have so say I love these types of soft sole shoes, I've made myself at least 10 different pairs so far (they unfortunately don't last all that long when you wear them all day every day).

I've made a heap of just everyday clothes for the kids and myself, t-shirts, shorts, pants, jumpers (sweaters) both sewing, and knitting (and crocheting too on occasion).

Then last year I decided that I wanted to try my hand at making coats.  Up until them most of the clothes I made were patterns that I had made up myself using old items of clothes, but a coat was something much ore complicated.  I found a perfect pattern flicking through a pattern book at the local fabric shop ad just had to try it.

  

I have to say I love the coat.  I made it pretty much to pattern, except I added a fleece interlining between the main fabric and the lining for added warmth - I wanted to be able to wear this all winter.  I think I wore this coat every day from January till March this year.

Of course my daughter decided that she wanted in on the action as well so for her I bought Vogue V9043 which ended up as this.

 

and eventually with a few modifications as this.

and this

 and this

 So thats where we are now.  I've just finished making duct tape manequins of both this kids so I can still sew for them whilst they're at school - well at least for a week or two till the grow again...I want to make one of me but I wasn't sure how it would turn out so I tried it on my son first thinking he's a lot smaller so if it doesn't work I've wasted less materials....but it did work so as soon as I get some time a duct tape me will be made.