Shoes for 16" Miss Piggy

The basis for these shoes were plaster castings I had made some time ago. I glued the platform toe parts to cardboard soles that had 3 layers of cardboard glued in shape.

Next, I covered the sides of the toe parts with leather and filled gaps with leftover pieces to make sure that the outer soles would stay even when glued in place.

Then I covered the plaster casting heels with leather and glued them in place. Usually the heels are the last part to be glued, but I wanted to try a different method this time.

Then I covered with leather the edges that still had cardboard visible. The metal strip you can see in the photo is there to provide extra support to keep the arch in correct form. I don't use that a lot, but Piggy weighs more than smaller dolls, so some additional strength is a good idea.

For the closing mechanism I decided to try hook and eye, which turned out to be a bad idea as you can see later.

The straps are made of leather and the decorations are actually sticker strips with transparent background. Those are really easy to use for something like this. I covered the strips with glossy sealer just to be sure that nothing will fall off later.

The insoles are made of cardboard and covered with leather leaving some extra around the edges. I cut off the extra where the straps went, but in other places I turned it under the soles.

Here you can see the insoles with some sections already turned under.

The problem with hook and eye was that the end of the strap pointed to the side instead of going along the side of the foot. As I had already glued the pieces in place, I decided to fix this by cutting the hooks, pressing them flat and gluing the straps to the leather strips that held the hooks. So the result is no closing mechanism at all, but fortunately Miss Piggy's feet are different from most other dolls' feet and even shoes with fixed straps placed this high will be fine.

Finally, here are the finished shoes. The outer soles are finished with pieces of dark brown leather.

Shoes for Alvin Ailey Barbie

The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater Barbie has pointed toe feet, so very few Barbie shoes fit. I decided to try making shoes for her, although Barbie feet are a bit too small to my taste.

The first step was to make the insoles out of cardboard. As you can see here, I made a toe part for the sole, although it would be left empty. The shoes need to have closed toe to disguise this.

Next, I glued pieces of leather there, so the toe part would keep its form.

Here you can see the pieces in place. I could have printed the texts directly to the cardboard I used for insoles as it would have been neater than gluing separate texts in place, but as this was the first try, I didn't bother.

I used narrow strips of decorative band for the uppers. Using several narrow strips helps getting the correct form as they can overlap, if needed.

Here one half of the upper is ready and the other needs to be glued in place next.

I made the ankle straps using rubber bands the same way I used them for Barbie shoes once before.

Here are the finished shoes from front and side. The heels are made of round pieces of wood cut to a 45 degree angle on the other end and painted white. The outer soles are made of leather.

I'm not quite happy with the result, but for a first try, it is good enough. Also, I learned a few things that should be done a bit differently, so I will probably try another pair at a later date.

Ankle boots made of leather

These are similar to the white ankle boots I made earlier. The main difference is the material, which was leather this time. That meant that I could glue the seams instead of sewing.
 

I had lost the PDF file with the text I use in the insoles, so instead of trying to recreate that I decided to scan and use my own text (the original used a font available in Word 2007, but I had forgotten its name).

This photo shows the boot's upper part finished. Only the outer sole and heel are missing.

Here are the finished boots on Ghoulia. This method of buttoning the boots works very well, so I'm sure I will apply it to some other designs as well.

Repainted Draculaura's boots

It's been some time since my last post. I have mostly unfinished projects at the moment, but also a couple of finished ones, first one of which is this (these have been finished for some time, I just haven't posted the photos here).

As I bought two Draculauras, I had two pairs of her boots and decided to paint one pair. The first picture shows the boots with several coats of the basic color. Covering that bright pink requires a lot of coats when using a light color.

Next, some details in place.

The colors used so far are these.

The blue used for the strap is my own mix left over from a dollhouse project.

The finished boots sealed with satin sealer. It seems to be working well as I have put these on the doll's feet and taken them off several times without any problems. Same with the pair I repainted earlier.

Another pair of ankle boots

I wanted to make a white pair of ankle boots for Spectra the same way I made greyscale Ghoulia's boots. The photo below shows a closeup of the material I planned to use. It's half fabric, half some sort of plastic.

Here are the main parts for the boots with the plastic side (outside) facing up.

I used these scissors for cutting some edges. As these are actually meant for cutting cardboard, they were not sharp enough for soft plastic and I had to finish the cutting with regular scissors.

I tried gluing the back seams, but that didn't hold, so I decided to sew them.

I also sewed the front seam. As the fabric side was inside, gluing the uppers in place was not a problem.

This time I glued the toe part in place at this point, which actually turned out to be the better way to do it.

Then I made the button holes.

The heels are made of wood again, but I decided to paint them, because the plastic material was too thick for covering them.

Then I sewed the buttons in place the same way as previously, glued the heels in place, and glued pieces of leather as outer soles.

Here are some photos of the finished shoes.

Greyscale Ghoulia's ankle boots

The customized Ghoulia still needs an outfit and I decided to start with her shoes. As I'm thinking of making her an old-fashioned dress, I searched for old shoes designs and found this in one of my books about shoes. The only problem is the height of the heels. The old techniques for making shoes had limitations in that respect, but Ghoulia has high heel feet, so I had to sacrifice some authenticity.

Here are the parts for the shoes. They are all leather, except the two layers of cardboard under the insoles. The patterns for these were a bit trickier to make than normally and I started with discarded pieces of fabric, so I wouldn't waste any leather. The toe part is separate, because it would be hard to handle a seam going lengthwise there.

Next, I glued the front seams.

And then the back seam.

Because of the seams, it was important to position the uppers just right. To do this, you need to glue the flap at the back seam first and then a couple of places in the toe part. This keeps the upper in correct place while gluing the rest.

Then I made holes for the buttons in the flap and sewed the buttons to the other side. You need to make the holes first, put the shoe on the doll's foot, place the flap where it should be when the shoe is closed and then use a pen to mark the places for the buttons. The holes are the smallest my tool could make, probably 2 mm (or slightly smaller as I use that size when inserting 2 mm eyelets to leather and it's a bit tight). I used small beads as buttons and they suit the purpose well.

I made the heels the same way as the heels for Draculaura's boots, glued them in place and glued pieces of leather as outer soles.

Platform sandals for Miss Piggy

As I was looking through some fashion magazines from this year and cutting shoe pictures for later reference, I got several new ideas. One of them came from this picture of a Prada shoe. I rarely make replicas, so the basic construction is from this, but I used black leather and the fabric I used for Monster High doll shoes earlier.

I started by cutting the toe parts from cork. I used leftover pieces from the cork board I used for the dollhouse front wall, so it was too coarse to be used as such, but was fine for this as it was going to be covered in thick leather. The heels are cut from a round wooden stick. Getting the right angle on the top was tricky as a mitre box is meant for cutting in 45 degree angle, which would have been too steep. So, I had to keep the piece of wood in angle in the mitre box during sawing.

I covered the pieces with leather. The pieces of leather in the top and bottom of the cork parts are there to help keep the soles even.

The insoles have two layers of cardboard and one of leather. The outer soles have three layers of cardboard with leather strips glued to the sides and leftover pieces glued to the top and bottom. The cardboard in the insoles will take care of small unevenness, but without the leftover pieces in the middle of the outer soles, the center part of the insoles would be lower than the edges when the soles are glued together.

The straps are glued in place here. They consist of leather strips covered with fabric (the fabric was too thin to use alone). The leather parts do not go under the insoles, just the fabric. Leather is too thick and would make the insoles bumpy.

Here are the parts so far. The parts that go behind the heel are made of leather and one layer of cardboard. The reason for using cardboard is that it keeps the parts in correct shape when you glue the fabric in place.

Next, I glued the cork parts to the outer soles and covered the heel parts with fabric. The light colored leather pieces shown beside them are the innermost pieces that will cover the flaps of glued fabric.

This closeup shows the construction better. The ankle straps are also in place here and so are the beads that will be used for closing them. The ends of the straps and the thread used to attach the beads will all be hidden under the leather pieces.

Here is the upper part of the right shoe almost finished.

The same in a side view after gluing the outer sole in place.

The loops for closing the ankle straps are made of thin rubber band and glued in place.

Almost finished. The parts in the middle are the leather pieces to be glued on the bottom of the outer soles to cover them.

The final step was to glue the heels in place. Here are the finished shoes.

And finally, the shoes on Miss Piggy's feet.