My dolls dress better than I do

I wasn't going to order these, but couldn't resist the temptation. So, I made the preorder and should get them in a couple of months. The way I thought it was that I'm never going to get a chance to wear Louboutin shoes, so I could at least get them for my dolls.

Sandals for a Monster High doll

This is the first pair of shoes I made for a Monster High doll. The insoles are made of leather and straps are cardwoven bands made of sewing thread and thin silver colored thread. To get the strap length correct, I decided to make the buckles first and only then glue the ankle straps in place. One thing to keep in mind while gluing the straps in place is to make sure you don't make them too tight. You need to be able to open and close the buckle. So make sure to check that you can do it before the glue has dried.


I used metal strips inside the soles to help keep the correct shape. It also helped dealing with the bulge caused by the end of the straps.


I thought it would be a good idea to add a little extra, so these wouldn't be just basic sandals. As the buckles aren't glued or soldered shut, the coins can be easily removed.


Almost ready: straps in place, outer soles glued in place, only heels are missing.


Here are the finished shoes. The heels are carved from balsa wood and covered with leather.

A finished pair of shoes for a Monster High doll

In addition to making the cork soles, I've also managed to get this pair finished. The inner and outer soles are made of leather, the heels are made of balsa wood and covered with leather, and the bands are cardwoven out of sewing thread.

Cork soles for Monster High doll shoes

I haven't made any doll shoes for some time, but as I got two of the Monster High dolls, which have odd-sized feet (not Barbie scale, but not like 15" dolls either), I got enough motivation to make some shoes.

The first idea was to make cork soles a bit differently than before. The usual method (stacking cork sheet pieces horizontally) requires a lot of work in the carving stage. This time, I decided to try if I could get the arch in the right shape in the cutting stage.

First I drew the shape on paper, cut the pattern, copied it to the cork sheet and cut the pieces. The two pieces are mirror images, so that the pencil marks are hidden inside and won't be visible.


Then I glued the pieces together using PVA glue and making sure the sides with pencil marks were inside and clean sides outside. These little plastic clamps are very handy when gluing something this small.


While the heels parts where drying, I made the bottom parts. The picture doesn't actually show the final form as I cut these in roughly the correct shape and carved the final shape after everything was glued together. The reason for this is that the bottom part needs to be a bit bigger than the heel, so you can remove the excess following the edges of the heel to get as seamless result as possible.


Here the pieces are together before gluing. I carved the heel shape as close to final as possible before gluing.


This is what a finished sole looks like. Now I only need to decide what kind of shoes I'm going to make using these.

Open-toe boots with zippers

As I was going through some fashion magazines, I noticed that open-toe boots and boots that are actually more like sandals in structure seem to be in at the moment. So, naturally, I had to try and see what I could come up with. I decided to make boots for the American Model as I couldn't find small enough zippers that would have fit Sybarite or 16" Tonner dolls.

The picture below shows the leather parts (first drawn on paper, then copied on the reverse side of the leather using the paper pattern, and then cut with small scissors) and a 15 cm zipper, which I narrowed a bit and treated the edges with Fray Stop.


Next step was to glue those parts together.


It is better to do this first and cut the zipper to correct length after gluing. Before cutting the zipper, I made a stopper by placing glue on the part of the zipper where I was going to cut it. To hide that, I glued a thin strip of leather over the end of the zipper (see pictures of finished boots at the end of this post).

The next step was making the insoles (cardboard and leather glued together in shape) and gluing the lower strips under them. This actually makes these boots fairly easy to make as you don't need to go around curves, if you plan the width and placement of the strips carefully.


Then I cut two narrow, long strips of leather (a bit longer than needed to be on the safe side; you can trim them in the end), glued their ends under the heel and trimmed and glued the rest of the strips to these vertical strips. This is fairly easy as you can make the boots tight fitting. There is no need to consider how you'll be able to get them off the doll's feet, because the zippers are there for that.


The leather I was using was thin, but I still decided to fill the underside of the insoles to get smooth outer soles and neat edges for the soles. The heels are carved from wood and covered with leather.


For the outer soles, I wanted something different, so I decided to copy Louboutin and used red leather.


Finally, here are photos of the finished boots from several angles.






An alternative way of making something like this would be cutting thin strips of leather and just wrapping them around the leg and gluing the ends to the edges of the zipper. That way, you could use very narrow strips and make intricate patterns. Of course you could also make intricate patterns with the method I've used, if you've got the patience to cut four pieces with a lot of little holes.

Shoe patterns on my web site

You can now find the patterns for Baha Cat boots and Schizo's shoes on my web site.

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.