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And I would have been painting/re-covering shoes anyway, so they were technically on the list anyway!
I swore to Robin I wasn't going to get into shoemaking before Gettysburg...but I came across The Pragmatic Costumer's blog post on making a pair of 1850s shoes a couple days ago. And I thought, well, that doesn't actually sound so hard!
I maintain there's a difference between the slippers I'm throwing together, and real shoes, though! These little boogers don't require a last. They're really stupid simple: sew together upper, sew upper to sole. Turn outside-in. Et voila, slipper. These are only taking a little longer because I decided to hand sew all the bits of the uppers by hand. Two pairs, because practice makes perfect! (?) One pair of ball slippers, and one to wear in the cabin to keep my footsies warm (because finding square-toed slippers is a real problem, people). Leftover red satin from the 18-teens bonnet for the ball slippers, and a Really Old bit of red and gold vicose Joann's damask from the scrap bin for the cabin slippers. Not that I can offhand think of any damask slippers, but they were big on fancypantsy house slippers (Berlin work was madly popular, but I'm not going to pretend I think I have time for that), so I call it Close Enough.
Didn't quite make my goal of finishing the uppers today, but in my defense, I had distractions...
The cabin slippers stand up more nicely because they're interlined with wool batting...the satin slippers are quite floppy! Ideally, they both ought to be bound in petersham, but I only had two colors on hand, neither of which were red, so silk ribbon for the satin, and self-bias for the damask (which will probably be trimmed in fur anyway, which will hide the binding).
I swore to Robin I wasn't going to get into shoemaking before Gettysburg...but I came across The Pragmatic Costumer's blog post on making a pair of 1850s shoes a couple days ago. And I thought, well, that doesn't actually sound so hard!
I maintain there's a difference between the slippers I'm throwing together, and real shoes, though! These little boogers don't require a last. They're really stupid simple: sew together upper, sew upper to sole. Turn outside-in. Et voila, slipper. These are only taking a little longer because I decided to hand sew all the bits of the uppers by hand. Two pairs, because practice makes perfect! (?) One pair of ball slippers, and one to wear in the cabin to keep my footsies warm (because finding square-toed slippers is a real problem, people). Leftover red satin from the 18-teens bonnet for the ball slippers, and a Really Old bit of red and gold vicose Joann's damask from the scrap bin for the cabin slippers. Not that I can offhand think of any damask slippers, but they were big on fancypantsy house slippers (Berlin work was madly popular, but I'm not going to pretend I think I have time for that), so I call it Close Enough.
Didn't quite make my goal of finishing the uppers today, but in my defense, I had distractions...
The cabin slippers stand up more nicely because they're interlined with wool batting...the satin slippers are quite floppy! Ideally, they both ought to be bound in petersham, but I only had two colors on hand, neither of which were red, so silk ribbon for the satin, and self-bias for the damask (which will probably be trimmed in fur anyway, which will hide the binding).
