Project: Polonaise- Part 8, The Shoes

It took a while for me to decide what to do about the shoes. I spent a long time on the American Duchess website fawning over their wonderful creations and wishing I could justify spending a pretty big slice of my budget on them. Unfortunately my model had quite large feet which would have made getting the right size difficult. This, added to the shipping costs and customs charges I would have had to pay, plus the fact that I was on a deadline meant I had to look for other options.

The look I was aiming for

 Whilst scrolling through Pinterest in a fit of stress and worry I came across two different blog posts by ladyannabelle-of-didmarton and  couturemayah were they demonstrated how to turn an ordinary pair of high heels into 18th century style shoes! I was saved! I gathered together shoes, epoxy putty and fabric glue and got to work...



What I eventually came up was was a combination of both blog posts as well as my own trial and error.

Probably the most difficult part of this project was finding a pair of shoes to fit my model, as I mentioned previously she has quite large feet so there were no cheap pairs in any of the local Charity shops that would fit her and all the high street shops had decided that tall, chunky heels were the only thing anyone could possibly want to buy this year. I gave up and ordered a pair on Amazon...no sooner had these arrived that I found a pair at a clothes swap that cost me £2.50.

The fabric was stripped off the heels of the shoes in order for the epoxy putty to stick properly. The plastic end of the heels were also removed and kept.

I used these two shoes from The Russian Shoe museum as my main sources of inspiration for the final shape of the shoe.

Using these references as a guide the left shoe was covered in calico and patterns drafted for the toes, straps and tongue.

A tongue for the shoe was cut from leather and the tacked over the calico. The shoe was then tried on the model to make sure it still fitted.

I then drafted up some paper patterns using the calico pieces and remembered just in time that, as both sides of the shoe were different shapes both sides would need to have a separate pattern. After that the tongues were slip stitched in place using a leather needle.

Milliput Epoxy Putty was used to shape the heels (other brands of epoxy putty are available). I found mine in my local department store in the plastic modelling section. Using the putty was really easy, a bit like playing with Plasticine.

In order to stop the original colour of the shoes from showing through the silk I cut out interlinings from pink polycotton first.

A pattern was drafted for the heel covering

The heel coverings were cut from linen and backed with cotton. The strap linings were also cut from linen and tacked to the strap pieces. The heel covering was then constructed and glued to the shoe.

The toe covering of the shoe was then glued around the sole turning the seam allowance under. Where the toe covering met the heel covering they were stitched together.

The straps were bound with bias binding and stitched to the heel and toe coverings

The tongue and opening of the shoe were bound using a combination of fabric glue and hand stitching.

Holes were pierced for the buckles using an awl and the hole buttonhole stitched with a double length of sewing thread.

I had the buckles in my stash, salvaged from an old pair of boots.

After that I added a Suffolk puff to each of the toes using scraps of blue/green taffeta. I'm not sure how accurate Suffolk puffs are for this time period, but they looked cute and took less time to make than a gathered frill would have.

All in all I really like these shoes! They were very quick to make (took just over a weekend) and the biggest expense was the epoxy putty at only £3.00. All together these shoes cost just over £11.00 to make which was a great saving on my budget.

Part nine of Project: Polonaise (the hat) should be up soon!

(Also sorry for some of the photos formatting oddly, they didn't want to behave!)