I made these little fringed leather shoes for Gwen this week. I’ve never made shoes or worked with leather before, so I’m really happy with how they turned out!
I googled around for instructions and patterns, but nothing I found was really what I was looking for so I ended up working up something of my own based off a few different ones. For leather I bought a bag of scraps from Michael’s, which was I think about $13 dollars, and the elastic was $3 for 3 yards. The needles and thread I already had- well, I did buy a proper needle for sewing leather but it sucked and I only made one stitch before it bent and became unusable. I had better luck with the second regular needle I used; the first snapped in half!
It took me three evenings to finish them, although a lot of time was spent working out the pattern and the original fringe I sewed on the vamps (the front/top part of the shoe) didn’t work out so I had to unstitch them and do new ones. Now that I have it figured out I think my next pair will go a lot more quickly- I still have plenty of leather from the bag of scraps, plus I ordered some beautiful gold leather from etsy that I’m really excited to work with!
They are a little big still, but they fit enough that she can wear them now, today with stripey pants and her Professor Baby sweater.