Look at these pretties

As I mentioned in my last post, last week I improvised a pair of 18th-century-looking shoes.
Why would I do that?
Two reasons spring to mind: I need some sort of footwear for the end of the year show that we'll be having, showcasing our awesome 18th century clothing (can you feel the sarcasm in there? I'm half super excited, and half annoyed by this), and secondly, I wanted to try my hand at modifying shoes.

Materials needed:
-Pair of shoes for sacrificial purposes
-Paper to make the upper's pattern
-Canvas or 2 layers of cotton fabric glued together
-Decorative fabric, such as upholstery fabric
-Spray Adhesive
-Glue Gun
-Scissors
-Heat resistant fingers (or a high tolerance to hot glue burns)

I started out with a pair of pale pink shoes with a small Louis heel and a slightly elongated but rounded toe. Of course, I didn't start taking pictures until after I had started hacking and cutting off different part of the shoes... I removed the heel strap, to be left with something that looked like a mule, and also removed the hideous little bow at the front of the shoes.

I started taking pictures around this moment now. I made the paper pattern by draping a piece of cotton on top of my foot inside the shoe. I put my piece on the bias to get a little stretch out of it. Since I was going for an 18th century look, I extended the upper to a point over my foot.

Once I had the paper pattern, I cut out three layers of fabric. Two of factory cotton that I glued together, and a third of my upholstery fabric. On the third layer, I added an extra half inch of fabric to be able to fold it over the raw edge of the layer underneath, and have the semblance of a finished edge. I clipped the extra seam allowance and glued it down on the inside with spray adhesive. I also put some fray-check on weaker areas, as upholstery fabric frays like crazy! I also added a line of sewing at the very top, just as a precaution.

Then, I sprayed the heel of the shoe with adhesive and draped a piece of bias fabric on it to cover it completely. You can't really tell, but there's a shoe under there.

Here's a look at the heel after I stretched fabric over it. Then I let it dry, and once it was dry I removed the excess fabric, taking care to leave about 1/2 inch all around to tuck down and glue in place. I clipped into this extra allowance to allow it to lie flat against the inside of the heel and the insole of the shoe.

Once that was done, and glued, and dried, I took the uppers that I prepared earlier, and did something similar. Applied hot glue to the top of the shoe and around the sides, and carefully applied the stiff fabric layer in place.

Here's what it looks like from the top and bottom, after all the excess has been clipped into and secured to the bottom of the sole.

I know there would have been the possibility of removing the sole of the shoe, tucking all the ends under, and sandwiching them between the shoe and the bottom sole afterwards, but I lacked the physical strength to drive a screwdriver in between the two layers of the shoes. So I had to make-do.

Once that was all done, I put a piece of factory cotton under the part of the heel that shows (but not under the grippy part) and another piece of cotton on the inside. The goal of these extra pieces is to hide any fraying that happened/is-happening/will-probably-happen-in-a-near-future to the outer layer of fabric. It also looks nicer and neater.

I then put the shoes on! And realized that there was a rather large pull right across the front. I guess I shouldn't become a cobbler. But no worries! What's the eighteenth century without a few well-place bows? Ta-dah! With bows on, you can hardly tell it even puckered in the first place. (So clever of me.) And I rather enjoy the way they look with the bows too.

Yes, these are shameless mirror selfies... I'm also wearing spiderweb tights underneath my stockings. Crazy crazy! Also, these are my hand-made, short-gored stockings, which are silk jersey, and embroidered with locally sourced green silk floss. The stockings are tied with ribbons above my knees. (The ribbons are tied fairly tightly, otherwise they just fall down.) My eighteenth century legwear are now finished! It's too bad my skirt will cover up all of that work.

I also only got two blisters from fooling around with hot glue. I burned my fingers several times, but always in the same two spots... These shoes aren't perfect, far from it. I wouldn't ever claim so. They do look adorable though, and they're only intended to be worn on a stage for a few hours in April. As long as no one looks too closely, they make a fairly good impression.