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.

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? ;)

Making High Heel Boots - Part 2 Test patterns

Now that we've got the lasts done, think about this challenge: you have a three dimensional object with curvy shapes and all, and you're supposed to draw patterns to it. All the more, patterns that can be reused and modified later. How on earth could that be possible? With your everyday masking tape! :D
Here I'll demonstrate how the patterns are born to a shoe.

Let's see how:

First the last is covered with masking tape in an orderly fashion.

Like so.

Next, the excess is cut thorough the edges of the sole.

Like so :)

Then, some necessary markings and a central line to the front and back.

And a cut along the middle lines.

And thus we'll have the inner and the outer sides of the last. Which are then removed separately, like seen in this picture.

They'll be a pair of quirky, mischievous pieces of masking tape after...

...So we'll discipline them flat on a cardboard.

Both of them are drawn on top of each other, to produce a single pattern.

When cutting the copy, some of the areas are halved.

And there it is! If the lasts remain the same, with this pattern one can now draw any kind of design on them.

I have to admit, I'm not very knowledgeable when it comes to drawing patterns. So luckily I've a very skilled colleague, a sturdy professional, Mr. Joonas. This base pattern is 99% his handwork. I just basically drew two lines to it.

Seriously, even Joonas was hesitant of the design, so I'll just have to make a test run with it. Then I'll see how different things'll work.

Next up is cutting the pattern pieces and using them to cut the leathers. And skiving and sewing the leathers, so we'll see what's up with the uppers. Cheerio!

Lesteille täytyy seuraavaksi tehdä kaavat. Yllä esitellään kuinka kolmiulotteisesta lestistä kopioidaan muodot kaksi ulotteisiksi, käyttäen maalarinteippiä :) Useiden vaiheiden jälkeen on viimeisinä kahtena kuvana kollegani Hra. Joonaksen mestarillinen kaavoitus. Itseltäni ei tuo kaavoitus oikein vielä näin mallikkaasti suju, joten oli mahtavaa saada rautaisen ammattilaisen apua. Seuraavaksi sitten leikataan kaavapalat sekä niitä hyödyntäen päällisnahat. Näin päästään testailemaan miten kaavat toimivat.

Making Ballerinas - Part 9 The outer sole

Making the outer soles can be sometimes frustrating: You're so close to completion of the shoes and then you start to get anxious and impatient, especially when all the time you have is basically the late evening/night, so you want to finish them quickly. Well, they turned out ok after all. But I still feel I could've done them better: lots of little details were left ugly and proper tools are missing. Making outer soles is alot about finishing, and when you're dealing with leather one has to pay great attention to details, unless you're just gonna paint it all black.
Enough blabbing my mouth, let's cut to the chase:

Here it all begins: I removed the nails and cut the excess leather out  from the undergoing uppers and lining. Then I cut two shanks out of carbon-fibre plate, and cork fillings.

Everything grinded and ready to take on the outer sole.

On the left is a glued, compressed and shaped outer sole with two shaping chisels. The left shoe has it's glued and skived outer sole waiting to be pressed.

A close up of the pressed on logo

I've fallen in love with the red soles, so I'm at it again.

Coloured. Still a bit wet though.

The formed half soles and heel rubbers with the grinded outer soles ready to be glued.

I want to reveal the outcome of the soles later, so next up was pulling the nails out from the lining.

I removed the lasts and made insole linings with the logo print.

And it was time to spread some polish, spray some care products, polish and oil the outer sole.

Sorry all this hidden mystery in the post, but I wanted to save up the details and everything to the actual reveal. Which is tomorrow! See you then!