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.


8 comments:

lorena said...

hola podria pedirte los moldes ya que en donde yo vivo no es posible encontrar revistas sobre estas hermosuras que haces y queria aprender mi correo es sandralorenacortez321@hotmail.com.ar desde ya muchas gracias y te felicito por realizar estas hermosuras

Anonymous said...

please,sell them on etsy <3

Tarja said...

Lorena, I'm sorry, but I don't understand Spanish. I tried translating your comment with Google translator, but the translation didn't make sense.

Anonymous, this pair was made for a specific custom doll. And anyway, I doubt that anyone would pay the prices I would need to charge to make it worth my while to sell my creations. I've tried eBay before and that didn't work.

Anonymous said...

I'm curious, how did you make the innersoles for these shoes? I've started making my own doll clothes for my MH dolls but have no shoes to go with them. Figuring out the patterns for everything overtop I know is simply trial and error, but it's to get the colid form for the sole that I'm having a problem with.

Tarja said...

Check the "Doll Shoe Patterns" link in the first section of the sidebar. The pattern files include also instructions.

Anonymous said...

These are gorgeous you are truly talented

Unknown said...

Here is what Lorena said. Rough translation :

hi could ask the molds because where I live you can not find magazines on these beauties you do and wanted to learn my email is sandralorenacortez321@hotmail.com.ar from already thank you very much and congratulations on making these beauties

I guess what she is asking is, can you email her and show her how to do the shoes.

As for my question I was wondering

a. if you had a template for the over the ankle boots. Smaller ones. I saw the templates for the knee boots and I can guess how to make the thigh highs... but I was wondering if you had an actual template as I just made a dress/corset combo and those shoes would work perfectly!

b. What type of cardboard do you recommend? I can figure out what type you are using... as they look molded. Have you thought about doing a youtube channel. I am sure people would love that... And do you sell on etsy??

Meghan

Tarja said...

I have a pattern for the ankle boots, but I haven't made a PDF file of it. The cardboard I'm using is 80 g/m2 (or maybe 90, I don't have the package anymore, so I can't check).

I have a YouTube channel with a few videos in it, but I haven't made any new videos for a long time. Just check any blog post with label "Video."

No Etsy as I don't sell my creations.