Tuesday, November 22, 2011

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.




Wednesday, November 9, 2011

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.