Making High Heel Boots - Part 6 Cutting the leather uppers

Well, after almost three months of wait we're back to business with Niina's high heels! Groovy!
I've made progress during this time, but waited to get things decent for a logic continuum.

Without further due: Last time I made little changes to the lasts and sent a shoe for Niina to be tried, and she gave the ok. So now, all I had to do was to draw the patterns for the third time :) Well, it's the charm 'innit?
After the base-pattern, I cut all the pieces out and used them to cut the leathers for the uppers.
So they're all leather. Inside and outside. Just the way I like it.

A little peek, ladies & gents?

All the pieces. The base-pattern is in the middle.

The base is used to "cut out" all the necessary individual pieces.

My choice of materials:
(From the left) Black Patent leather, Cream Nubuck, Black Suede, Black nappa leather (thin, for lining),  White  supporting cloth.

My choice of tools:
(From the left) Punching awl, silver grease pen (for erasable markings),  clicker's knife (clicker=leather cutter person), two sharpening sticks with grit 600 and 1200 glued to them. Used to sharpen the knife.

The blade has to be like a razor. Period.

And after a few hours, here's all the pieces ready for sewing.

In a shoe factory, the clicker is an actual separate profession. After years of cutting leather, one learns to be fast, has a precise cut, learns to avoid faults in the leather and above all is economic. These are qualities that I'm not too strong in. Yet. Hence the long consumption of time. A pro would've done this in about 15 minutes

Next up sewing.   

Making High Heel Boots - Part 3 The first mockup

Seriously, I'm so unsure about these lasts, that a second mockup is due for sure. It could of course be the voice of uncertainty, since it's my first bespoke high heel creation. Which is perfectly natural :)
Anywayhoo, today's program consists of first cutting away those individual pattern pieces from the basic design that my colleague Mr. Master Shoemaker Joonas conjured on the cardboard. Then it's leather cutting, leather skiving (=making the edges gradually thin, wherever needed), gluing & sewing and finally lasting these babies to see how they end up. It's ever so exciting!

First, I had to add more lines to the design :) Like allowances and such.

Here's a nifty tool: to copy the shapes from the design, you simply position another cardboard underneath it and start rolling that baby. Thus, there's a pattern waiting down under.

With necessary markings made, the patterns are cut out with a sharp knife.

And here's all the patterns and some leathers of which I'll do the mockup. A great chance to tryout that red handled clicker's (=upper cutter) knife. The ladies at our shop cut only with scissors, which is also accurate but more slow. Cutting your leathers with a knife is the traditional way to go and will save you a lot of time in contrast to first marking with a pen and then using scissors.

And all the pro's go: he's cutting from the neck!? Yes, dear fellow shoemakers I am. It's a mockup :)
Neck is usually not the best areas to cut your uppers from, since it has these dark stretch marks which you can maybe see in this picture. The best part of a cow is on the lower back and ass area.
On red, you'll see the stretching direction of the  leather on the neck area.
The blue arrows show the direction where we don't want the leather to stretch when compared to the pattern.

Cut away! The blade is amazing! Thanks cordwainertools :)

I took a traditional approach to markings as well: The small hole is made with a sharp spike.

Here's the whole family ready for skiving and sewing.

A close up of the skiving machine. The leather is fed from the left and it leans on the stopper. The foot is adjusted to the required skiving position and the rough stone pushes the leather towards that rotating round blade seen on the right.

Like so.

Voilá!

Some of the edges are contact glued to help sewing.

The glued surfaces are carefully placed together, and it's sewing time.

The shoe industry's special sewing machine with a pole base. This way it's easy to sew uppers which tend to have tight corners and shapes.

I wanted to try out a french fold on the upper part. A small but rewarding detail.

There it is, after 4 hours of manual labour.

A bow tie made with great haste ;)

Before lasting, I'll use contact glue to the upper edges of a heel counter, so I can put some carpenter's glue in between. This way I'll have them hard and durable.

The toe part needs a stiffener too.

Before lasting, the toe cap get's some carpenter's glue.

And it's a wrap! This image tells quite well how the uppers are stretched and attached to the bottom.
For those unfamiliar with the concept of lasting, check out my earlier post about the same subject: here.

Here it be. I managed to accidentally put the zipper to the outer side of the shoe. Oh well,  luckily it's just a mockup.

Back view.

View from the inner side. The cuts need some tweaking.

What say you? ;)