Making Ballerinas - Part 5 The new design

At last! The project posts continue! It took me some time, but maybe after seeing it you'll understand why it takes relatively long time to make shoes. Especially if one has only his spare time to do them.
Anyhow, this post was originally meant to be longer but I had to split it in two parts because of it's image volume: 23. So, in this first part I'll just introduce to you all the fixed new design and some steps after. Enjoy.

Here you'll see the difference: the upper is the old design with the "wings" and below the fixed version that I'll make into the actual ballerinas. 

The different pattern pieces are copied through the basic copy to another cardboard.

Allowances and other markings are made with specific tools.

Holes are punched to guidance points. This will help you place the uppers in correct positions.

The templates are then cut out with a knife.

And here's all the templates we need to make the uppers :)

The templates are then used to draw them on the material of your choice.

All the templates are drawn. It's scissoring time!

And here's every piece ready for the next phase: skiving and sewing. My material choices were: regular cow leather on the front pieces, artificial suede called alcantara (used usually in car upholstery and couches) for the back pieces and goat leather for the linings. As a bonus there's vegetally tanned 1mm side stiffeners that'll... well, stiffen the sides :) They'll go hidden between the uppers and the lining. But more of that later.

Next up is the sewing and making the insole. See you soon!

Making Ballerinas - Part 2 The Last

The shoe is built piece by piece on a last. Last is the most central part in shoe making: the shape that defines basically everything that makes a shoe. There are some exceptions, to which I'm not going to now. Because of it's importance it's the most difficult and diverse to master in the art of shoe making.
I'll now show some phases of shaping the lasts to my specific purpose. This is not a tutorial, so I'm not going very deep on the subject but rather give all you readers a chance to take a peek at the phases.

Measurements:

The customers feet, pencil, paper and a tape measure is all one basically needs to  start the show.

The image of the foot is drawn on paper, and careful measurements are made from key parts  of the foot.

And this is more or less the template you'll end up with.

Shaping the last:

For lasts I took some old pair laying around my shelf at work. Now the ideal would be to have their heel height the same as the one you're making, but since this wasn't possible I did some fine tuning to them.

The heel height is transformed into a flat shoe.  Top left is the original last with a blue cut line. Next down is the  changed last with it's bottom shape to the right. The last last with the final shape.

The toe shape had a dramatic change.

To try out the shape of the last, a handy heat formable plastic is first wrapped on  the last and then cut to an estimate model to be fitted on the customers foot. Kinda like a pre mock up. I'll go with these!

I couldn't help myself to try on a peace of leather :D It's also difficult to see all the shapes of the tip, so  this gives a better view on how things are gonna look. I'm quite satisfied with the result :)

Next up is making patterns and a mock up. See you soon!