Sunday, March 7, 2010

Patent leather shoes

These shoes are for a Living Dead Doll and they are made basically the same way as loafers for Anges Dreary. There are a couple of differences, though.

First, these shoes have a pronounced heel, although the insole is quite flat. This is achieved by gluing several layers of cardboard in the other end, but leaving the heel with only one or two layers.


The material is patent leather, which is thick, so the only way to make fairly invisible seams was to sew them. In Agnes' shoes, the back seam is glued, but with this material that was not an option. I treated the inside of the leather with sealer, because the Living Dead Dolls seem to be much more prone to staining than other dolls, probably because of the matte surface of these dolls.

Here are the uppers with all seams sewn. When gluing the back seam, I do that only after gluing a few tabs of the upper under the insole, but with sewing, you need to finish the back seam before any gluing.

This is how the finished shoes look like. In Agnes' shoes, there were only two layers of leather for the heel and even that caused some balance issues. Here there are four layers of fairly thick leather glued together to form the heel and the doll stays in balance just fine, because inside the shoe, the sole is flat and level.


The doll's feet are sort of wedge-shaped and the extra layers of cardboard do not make the shoes look in any way odd. In fact, the shoes look more normal than ones with entirely flat soles would look, because this structure corrects the shape of the feet.