Wanted: Dead or Alive (Size 7)

I need these Chuck Taylors. Need. Them. Unfortunately, the Converse website only has them in a size 12.5! And I wear a 7. This is a freaking tragedy. Because they’re meant to be my shoes. They’re red. They’re patchwork. They’re Chucks. They’re perfect. I’ve looked high and low online and can’t find them. So, if you see them, please, please, puh-lease let me know and send me a link. Otherwise, enjoy the gorgeous canvas shoe eye-candy.

Sigh…

~Sarah

Wear a Dress Week & Another Amy Butler Lotus Dress

I certainly love the Amy Butler Lotus dress. So much, in fact, that I’d planned on wearing this version in celebration of International Wear a Dress Day/Week.

Except, when I got dressed this morning, I decided that I really wanted needed to wear these shoes.

Which don’t really go with my pink dress. At all. If I didn’t happen to have a meeting today and therefore be required to present an illusion of professionalism, I would have just worn the aqua shoes and pink dress and said “to hell with it.”

So, I pulled out my black stretch twill version (and I’ve got to reiterate my point in my earlier post about this dress–this one works so much better in a stretch woven, since it’s meant to be quite fitted) of the Amy Butler Lotus Tunic/Dress, because I know you can wear aqua shoes with a plain black dress. And it gave me an excuse to show it off to you guys.

I also know that a denim jacket (my fave–I watched it at the Sundance Catalog Shop forever until it went on clearance) goes with everything–including both aqua shoes and a plain black dress. So I think I did okay in my celebration of International Wear a Dress Day/Week… Right?

(My apologies to Antoinette for not wearing the dress I said I was going to wear.)

~Sarah

Shoeberries

Josh’s latest handmade shoe creation. This version is high-tops made using old Vans soles and Joel Dewberry’s new sateen canvas fabric line, Ginseng, from FreeSpirit.
Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

It’s Gotta Be the Shoes

It has taken me ten days, but I think I am finally able to discuss the shoes. The combination of frustration, old shoe funk and the massive loss of brain cells from working with Shoe Goo had rendered me unable to rationally explain why and how I made these things and their deeper meaning (not really, they don’t have one).

I had been thumbing through the most recent issue of Craft Magazine a while back and noticed that there was an article on making shoes using an old pair of Chucks. Honestly, I thought this was pretty sweet, but wanted to go a step further, you know making my own toe instead of the rubber one and sewing the shoe into the sole instead of only gluing it (I would later regret the latter, greatly). I don’t have any old Chucks around that fit (this again is another incredibly whiny story about how sweet Chucks used to be and how I have worn the same size for many many years until buying my last pair which fit like clown shoes, errr) so instead I grabbed my lawn mowing shoes and went at them with a box cutter.

Making the pattern for the shoe was fairly easy, I skipped the gusset that the original shoe had and made one long piece that wrapped around the foot and another piece which was the toe and tongue piece. Off to a good start. I decided to make the shoes “super sweet” so I choose the left overs from Sarah’s lovely polka dot bag. I have worn shoes most of my life (and for a good portion of my adult life) so I am a fairly good judge of what fabric would make a sturdy shoe and obviously the cotton/linen blend of the Echino fabric was not going to cut it. As with every other project I start from scratch I grabbed some fusible fleece and some buckram (as US Weekly might say, “Shoes, they’re just like hats) and fused all three together to make a good solid shoe. As you can see I put three vertical stitches at the back of the shoe to force the buckram to curve and giving it shape and I added an extra layer of fleece on the heel for more padding. I used the same combination to make the tongue/toe piece with additional padding on the tongue bit. At this point things are going really well and amazingly quickly.

The next step was to line the shoes, again I used the leftover bag material and cut the shoe piece slightly longer that the pattern piece. I simply edge stitched the right sides together (leaving the bottom unsewn) and pulled it over the shoe. I used spray glue to hold the lining fabric down, this would be the first instance of trouble. I really should have used the Shoe Goo at this point instead of the spray adhesive. While the Elmer’s sticks, the inside of your shoe takes a serious beating that only a probably toxic glue can handle.

On the tongue I did roughly the same maneuver, except I only sewed the half way down the tongue rights sides together and then I stitched on the outside for the rest of the tongue/toe piece. I found that this was the way that my other shoes were constructed and the laces other part of the shoe hides any rough edges.

So, I have my shoe pieces finished and waiting to be inserted into the soles. You can see I used some old Puma soles that were originally white but had turned that color of brown only dirt, grass and grime can turn rubber. This would stand and I attacked with spray paint. Unfortunately, I went to Freddy’s (Fred Meyer, ya’ll) by myself to pick out the spray paint and grabbed what I thought was a really close match to the Cherry color of the fabric. (Let’s be honest if this would have worked it would have been sweet). I went out to the backyard, sprayed those soles down and realized that I had gotten a maroon color instead of anything close to red so it was back to Freddy’s and another can of spray paint in black (labeled, I probably would have bought navy if I was just looking at caps). The soles sat for a day and half and looked alright.

This is where I really start to get into trouble, the soles are off limits and I am wanting to finish. My mind starts to wander and it hits me, I am going to make a sole out of (one guess……) that’s right buckram and then I can just glue it right into the soles. I cut out the shape using the shoe insert and start going to town. I get the sides sewed on and I put the toe/tongue in and realize that I have made elf shoes. Because, as I now know you must shape for your toesies. I immediately lop off the toe part from the tongue and make a larger newer toe out of the lining fabric but with nothing to stabilize it. Failure, now have a pair of really ugly slipper with know shape. My next move is some stretchable pleather from the Despot (yes I drove across town for 1/8 of a yard of fabric). I rip of the second toe and try this. Now I have really ugly vinyl slippers.

Sarah suggests that we make a straight piece to provide a bumper and the space for the toe piece to go over the toes. This is bloody brilliant I think, and I try again. Slightly cooler slippers, but I think it will work. The soles have dried to a point where they are usable. I start jamming and trimming my complete “shoe” into the sole. Awful. It dawns on me (really it should have long ago) that I should just directly glue the shoes into the sole. Who needs the buckram footbed? Out comes the seam ripper and off come the shoes (and a large part of my thumb). I reattach the original toe piece to the tongue (the applique leopards are there to hide this) and start gluing.

It gets ugly, because the glue and the paint are having a chemical reaction that is stripping the paint from the soles and turning the glue black and maroon, plus I neglected to bandage my thumb (if it falls off I have a culprit), which burns. After lots of needless pinning (the goo sets up fast) the shoe actually takes shape and looks like shoes!

I added some eyelets and laced these bad boys up. While the aren’t the prettiest things they are unique. Unfortunately, I should have used a nicer pair of shoes to start because these weren’t that comfortable to begin with, so ripping out the inserts and reapplying them hasn’t done anything to improve that situation.

I am working on a second pair with a canvas liner to give it more strength and shape and hope to have something even prettier and more comfortable.

This was actually an incredibly fun project. It really doesn’t take that much time if you do it correctly, and you gotta love recycling old stuff to make nicer stuff.

Slacker

This may come as a shock to everyone, but I actually finished something for once.

It’s been ages, and it’s not for lack of trying. I have had this pinstriped denim that I got at Bolt quite awhile ago (this fall, maybe?), but had grown way too attached to, and thus was reluctant to cut. It’s the same fabric that I used for the elbow patches of my “Not Knitted Sweater.” So, sort of on a whim, I decided to just go for it and make another pair of the Hot Patterns Jeanious Jeans, this time with the intention of not having them rip apart on the first wearing.

So I wore these to work all day on Monday (which explains why I’m so rumbled in all these pictures) and nothing dramatic happened.

To be completely honest, I was sort of waiting for the other shoe to drop on these. I figured that it would be inevitable that something would go wrong. I’d had another interesting zipper adventure with these, this time because I reused (Reduce! Reuse! Recycle! and all that) the zipper from my ill-fated first pair of Jeanious Jeans and accidentally yanked the zipper pull right off the zipper and had to have Josh bust oust out the pliers to make the zipper work again. (Of course, this was immediately after I’d had a painless fly construction and was talking all kinds of smack to Josh about why I couldn’t figure out why people thought fly zipper closures were so difficult. I kinda deserved this.) So, making a long story longer, I sort of assumed that the zipper would break. Of course, this didn’t stop me from wearing these jeans. It also didn’t stop me from being completely neurotic all day long, slightly obsessively checking to make sure that there wasn’t a huge gaping hole in the butt of my pants all day, or that I hadn’t had a terminal zipper malfunction.

Anyway, the zipper held (it was one of those great metal YKK zippers that are actually meant for jeans) and I think these are pretty nice.

Honestly, I’m more of a skirts and dresses for work gal, and a jeans-jeans person on the weekend. But, I really need more pants for work in the yucky weather during the winter. Sometimes the wet weather really doesn’t allow for the flippy girly-girl stuff I love to wear.

I will certainly make these again, as it’s a really nice, well-drafted pattern and a flattering style that works well for me and doesn’t make my legs look too short (I have this issue with pants–they seem to accentuate my annoyingly short legs sometimes). Next time, I’ll take in the front mid-section above the hip as well as the waist a bit, in order to get the fit that I like.

I think these would be fabulous in a linen, and I have some navy linen that my mom got me last summer that may be just right for the job. I had a pair of linen jeans in college that I practically lived in during miserable D.C. summers, so I’d love to recreate those.

But the real story here is the shoes that I’m wearing in these pictures.

(I just love these and wanted an excuse to show them off. They have a painted bow on them–how awesome is that?!)

~Sarah

P.S. Some housekeeping and other notes…

A couple of people have tagged us for “7 Random Things” and a “Make My Day Award.” Thank you! How thoughtful! And we promise we’ll pass it along ASAP–things have been wild around here lately, and we’ve just not been as dutiful in our blogging duties as we could/should be…

Also, if you’re a total technology geek (I am!), I’ve discovered a great web browser and I’m spreading the word. It’s Flock, and it’s based on Firefox, but has RSS feeds (to manage all the blogs you read), Flickr (to manage all your photos and those of your contacts), YouTube (self-explanatory), web email and Facebook (which I’ve recently begun to love) all integrated as one into the sidebar. Hard to explain, but it’s great if you have lots of blogs you read and sites like Facebook and Flickr that you visit often to just have them sitting right there while you’re doing your thing online. Anyway, just thought that some of you may be interested if you hadn’t heard about it. (Is this a product endorsement? Should I be getting a kickback of some kind? Hmmmm….)