Ready, steady, why ain't they ready... already?

Whoops! It's time to take a look at what's happened during the past week. I got another project request from a possible client: mid to high heel black boots with a twist of rock 'n roll. So I started drawing:

I made three designs on an convenient A4 size with an explanatory text portion and a neat small blueprint to help understand how different materials are divided.

And here's all three of them. I also made a special heel versions of these as requested by the client, but I'll show it to you all later when we've finalized the design. So far the one on the right is leading, but it'll go through some serious changes.

After work, it was good to test something that's been boggling my mind recently: to make french patina shoes. It's a traditional method of producing high end dress shoes (NOT the only one, though): you make the shoes normally but use a traditional vegetable tanned leather to make the uppers. The same as you use to make Lapikkaat, which are very familiar to all you Finns. You last them normally like on the leftmost shoe. Then you apply leather dye with a cloth as is done on the middle shoe. After drying it's burnishing, oiling and waxing. This way the colors get a deep tone to them, and the surface looks alive instead of even and plastic-like.

I'll still make new patterns and a new mockup of Niina's shoes, since I'm not very satisfied with the current situation.

Prototypes and mishaps

It's time to gaze on what happened years ago: I have two pairs of shoes in boxes, that haven't been used nor accepted any feet as their own. This is due to the nature of my whim, as not only were they technically unfitting but also lacked some basic elements to make them wearable. At the time, I was so consumed by the sheer vision of specific techniques that I forgot to follow the fundamentals of making shoes. Also, the other pair was made while I was still studying to become a shoemaker and the other one was my first bespoke tryout at the very beginning of my career. So, you learn from your mistakes. But there's still some ideas I'd like to still try with more experience.

There's a finnish translation that follows / Suomenkielinen käännös lopussa :)

The first pair I made while still studying. This was part of training how to draw patterns for shoes, and so I did! They're quite simple, with only a back seam and some loafer-like rubber bands to keep the shoes on. The main vision for these shoes was to try and make some decorations on it's characteristic vegetable tanned leather. A style which is traditionally more common to see on wallets, belts, bags and especially in western saddles. This technique of decorating leather is know as tooled leather.

You can maybe tell from this picture, that the breasts of the lasts were way too outward for this kind of a cut. So it's virtually impossible to get them to stay on your feet. 

A close up on the tooled leather. A design I drew myself.

For some crazy reason I wanted the back to be pointy. Quite impractical, and besides the back height was way too low.

Here they look quite ok, though the colour is another "what was I thinking?" moment.

Yeah, they're not hand sewn welt. They're glued shoes! So what? : D

The second pair was my first bespoke tryout for my wife. Pretty much everything was new to me, but I had to give the tooling another try. The faults with these are numerous, and I was again more driven by another burning vision: completely seamless shoes! Whooot? Is it possible? Well, here they are. I just managed to first last the lining over the whole last, let it dry, lasted the uppers and voila! Well... I did make some mistakes; I used the crappiest vegetable tanned leather we had for the uppers, didn't sew anything and didn't even add laces. Great going!

I used an art nouveau pattern, which I then modified to have a flower and a dragonfly. The dragonfly is only on the right shoe.

Moving more to the back, you'll see more of the art noveau design.

...And around to the inner side of the shoe, where you see the rest.

Usually there has to be some kind of seam here somewhere.

Esittelyssä pari kenkäparia vuosien takaa, jolloin olin vielä täysi noviisi kenkien tekemisessä. Itse asiassa toisen parin aikoihin vasta opiskelin koko taiteenlajia ja toisen aikaan olin vasta urani alussa. Joten niihin tuli paljon perusvirheitä, eikä omistajia sitten löytynyt ja kengät siirtyivät laatikoihin arkistoon. Kengissä oli aikanaan enemmänkin kyse erilaisten kummallisten tekniikoiden kokeiluista, joita luomispäissäni sitten toteutin. Kenkänteon perusteet saivat jäädä taakse :)
Ensimmäisessä parissa halusin kokeilla nahan kaivertamista. Tekniikkaa joka tunnetaan paremmin lompakoista, laukuista, vöistä ja etenkin lännen satuloista. Virheinä olivat kuitenkin lestin rinnakkuus, joka olisi pitänyt huomioida mallissa: venykkeillä varustettuna rinnan tulisi olla matala, mutta kyseisissä lesteissä se oli vielä ekstrasti rinnakas. Lisäksi takakorkeus oli liian matala, sekä omituinen terävä muoto takana ei olisi tuntunut kovin hyvältä akillesjänteelle.
Toisessa parissa visiona oli koristelun lisäksi täysi saumattomuus! Sekä vuori että päällinen pakotettiin ja pinnattiin koko lestin päälle. Harmi vain että käytin varmasti huonointa nahkaa koko talosta, ja tulos oli aikas huono. Virheistä oppii.

Time for some tuning and repairs

Yesterday and today I've had two requests for shoe repairs from my wife, and some tidying of those marvellous vintage lasts I presented in the last post:

Warning! Contains a few bad quality shots. Darn it, my shaking hands...

First up was the rasping of the high heel lasts to get the shapes smooth and flowing.

Next, my wife asked to do some shoe magic and transform her red suede shoes to black because they didn't suite any of her clothing. No problem, madam! There's some thread for sewing the tips by hand, and some leather dye.

So I took the pretty shoes to my lap, and before dyeing they're always good to clean first. Use a suede brush if it's just dust.

Some vigorous brushing!

After cleaning, it was time to apply the dye with a cloth. Sorry for the bad shot.

For comparison, here's the before -> after shot.

They got a nice reddish black tone to them, and the stitching is still visibly red. Nice!

Then it was time to sew the tip rubbers by hand with a special hook.

The Paubellarinas had suffered, since I had made the rubber band too tight, and now they had lost their flexibility. Time for a change!

I decided to cut the bands abit longer, to see what kind of effect it'll have while worn.