Rock'a me baby!

Some randomness from days recently past:

1960's winklepickers with cuban heels. For men. I think they're way elegant. Many consider pointy men's shoes disturbing and vulgar, but let them scream to the comments. Or something.
This picture is hanging from a wall in Kankaanpää shoemaker school.

And here's the proof that goodyear welted, classic and elegant shoes were made for men. In Finland.

And a peek at what I do daily at my desk - at work: This here's some orthopedic shoemaking in it's finest :)
The furthest shoe has a plastic counter and a composite (whatever that means) toe cap. The toe cap has varying layers of carbon fibre and god-knows-what-fibres and they've been laminated on the last with resin, obviously to give extra protection to the toes. The only things I've done here are the heel counters, the insoles, the steel amputation spring below and the whitish rubber protection on the toe caps.

Here's the pair ready and lasted. They're actually derby shoes, but have a shield of somesort over the laces. I don't exactly know why, as the design and patterns are not mine. I just last them.
And a pair of magnificient lasting pliers from Minke, made in deutschland.

And the mockups I'm getting ready soon. I wanted to show this unattractive view of the difficulties one has to face when sewing a zipper on a knee high boot.

A great weekend to you all!

Making High Heel Boots - Part 7 Closing

I've recently learned that "closing", in shoe manufacturing terms, means in fact sewing. Or to be more precise; many different phases in which all of the pieces of leather are prepared and put together (and sewn). The result is a neat package, ready to be lasted, and they're called the uppers. So closing means 'the making of the uppers', a phase which comes after clicking, a process which we looked at on my last post.

This week, I've had the fortune to spend a lot more time on making those bespoke high heels for Niina. And now it's time to continue the venture:

First up: a lot of skiving.

A closeup on the reason of skiving. Usually a skiving thread is hidden inside. This keeps the folding strong and  stretchless (is that a word? :). This is from the collar.

After folding, I added an reinforcing cloth for added stiffness.

The sewing came out pretty nice. I used size 90/14 needle and size 60/3 thread. The stitch is about 1,1mm long.

A close up on the lining. I was pretty pleased with these :)

The linings upside down and right way down.

Left shoe upper almost done.

A peek at the backside.

A second row of stitching attaches the lining to the upper. This proved to be quite difficult, as you'll see from the picture  below. I wasn't too pleased with the results. And to make things more difficult, with leather you'll get no second chances: if you stitch wrong it'll stay ruined forever. One can take out the falsely sewn thread, but the needle markings are left for everyone to see.

The boot had to be handled forcefully to get some close-to-decent results.

I didn't find a size 60 thread with a proper color, so I reluctantly used size 40.
I could do better with the sewing, too.

The collar down. It's ok.
There's a patent leather detail on the top.

Just waiting for lasting!