Sunday, December 20, 2020

Fixing the loafers

The second try on the loafers was more successful. In the photo below, you can see the soles (black, made of the same old mousepad as the sandal soles), paper pattern, pattern cut from clear plastic (more durable than paper), and the vertical side pieces. The soles are smaller this time. I traced the foot on paper and just rounded the result, not adding any extra length.



This time I used hot glue for attaching the side pieces around the edges of the soles. I even used it for the back seam, overlapping the edges a bit. Hot glue works extremely well with felt. I had soles made of air-drying modeling clay for which I used hot glue to attach the felt, didn't like the result and tried to remove the felt. Can't be done. The felt gets so effectively stuck that if you mess up, you cannot remove it and try again, you need to start from scratch.



The top of the shoes is similar to the first attempt. I tried making it narrower first, but it didn't work with these smaller soles, so the pattern for the top part was drawn the same way as in the first time. Basically, everything else was fine in the first time, just the soles were too big.



Here's another picture from a different angle. I'm still thinking about adding some decorations, but haven't figure out what those would be. The main thing for now is that the pattern and structure work, you just need to get the size of the soles correct.