It was year ago when I congratulated Dave and Olivia on a little boy, and now, for his special day, I wanted to put some effort into his present and create something especially for him.
So my idea was to personalise baby shoes.
The steps are not that easy to explain, because my creation went through some changes in the process.
First I had to figure out the size of the one year old's feet.
Then, I had to draw the approximate shape of the sole of the shoe.
Then I realised that personalising the bottom of the shoe with his name would be best. The shoe size wouldn't allow me to put any readable sized letters on the shoes. So I asked my creative daughters to write letters on the bottom and I used quilt knife to cut those letters from the leather. I realised that it would be perfect to have the letters in a different colour, and thus invented the double sole bottom. I glued a purple leather sole with cut-out letters and black plain one, that overlapped, hence, making his name readable in black.
The next step was to invent shoes that would be easy to put on and hard to take off. Big shoes can have a zipper or shoelaces etc..but these would be too small for that. The idea was to wrap a foot with leather, have enough space to insert foot, and then close it so that it doesn't fall off. I tried to draw some patterns on paper and cut them out, but had a difficult time testing them. So I went to the 'cut and fix' process.
Finally, the whole process took shape in my mind, the only thing I had left to do, was to pick the colours. Since I had some nice and colourful leftover leather ideal for a boy, I decided to use that.
Sewing was a little bit prolonged with a few complications and adjustments along the way, the limitation of space to manoeuvre small pieces of leather was the biggest issue.
But the final idea for smiley shoes was born, once again, accidentally, with help from my kids.
And the buttons gave me another good idea to secure the opening with elastics.
At the end I realised that such special shoes should have one special bag, so I created a pouch with a similar colour palette and initial, and a logo at the end. Just so everything is there.
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