How to Make Regency & Victorian Shoes: Beginner Shoemaking

Hello everyone, and welcome back. This week I realized I need to make myself a new pair of shoes. I've been making all of these things for a roughly 1805 ensemble, and I don't have a pair of shoes that would work for that era. So I guess time to make a pair. And as if that's not enough of a challenge, I figured this might be a great opportunity to show you a little bit more detail of how these things are assembled. Rather than just making a beautiful video out of the process, I'm going to try to make sure that I go through every step and really explain what I'm doing, and that hopefully this will help you in making your own pair of shoes. Because this particular era is something where you could actually feasibly make your own. I'm not saying this is easy. It's not. But I am going to amend my usual process of making this particular era to be something that is much more obtainable and reachable for someone who's starting out in this and is starting to learn about leather work and is interested in making their first pair of shoes. But before we get too far into that, I want to give a big thank you to this week's sponsor, HelloFresh. To me, HelloFresh means a box of fresh ingredients and creative recipes shows up at my door every week, and I barely have to think about it. Honestly, last week I made a pair of shoes and filmed it while still managing to cook and eat healthy meals. Each week there's a wide variety of meal options available that I can match with my schedule and my tastes. If I know I'll be busy, I rely on their quick and easy options, some of which only take a few minutes to prepare and require absolutely no cleanup. And it's all so worth it. 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Thanks again to HelloFresh for sponsoring this week's video, and hopefully helping everyone to take their costume game to the next level. Because, oh, shoes. Once you learn how to make even just the most basic flat pair of shoes, you have such a wide variety of options. The style that I have chosen is something that you see from around 1800 to 1810 pretty commonly. I know this because there's more than one toe shape that we can find this style existing in. And it tends to be a combination of a textile, like a cotton, whether it's a cotton twill, a nankeen cotton, or a plain weave cotton, and then a leather, sometimes black, sometimes colorful, and a little bit of embroidery on top of that leather done with a tambour stitch. I have made this particular type of shoe before. I made a pair for Samantha to go with her absolutely jaw-droppingly gorgeous embroidered white and red gown that she made. Still in awe, and would steal that if it even remotely would ever come close to fitting me. But I have been jealous of these shoes ever since I made the pair for her. They are based on a pair at the New England Historical Society that I got to take a look at. Yes, they look quite different in the historical picture because someone, I don't know why, decided to take a chunk of cork, it's the only way I can explain this, paint it red, and hammer two of the biggest nails I have ever seen through the top of the shoe interior into the heel. It's not supposed to have that, you guys, like it is, it doesn't look right because it's not right. So I didn't put that on there because I don't know what choice somebody made, but they made a choice and it was not a good one. But after making that pair for Samantha, I was so in love with that style, I really wanted to make my own version and I really loved the slightly more simple version that this pair presented. So that is what I'm going to be working on today. Now, that being said, this is not going to be a 100% perfectly accurate pair of shoes. I'm going to make some changes in order to make this more obtainable and accessible to people. Interestingly enough, those shoes around this time were generally stitched entirely together. If you fast forward just about 30-40 years, shoes were actually quite regularly cemented together, akin to a rubber cement. In fact, they used cuda percha, which is a rubber-based cement, and it's not very different from the modern process of making shoes. So what that means for you and for me is that it's a much faster and easier process. It's not 100% accurate, but unless you really know what you're looking for and you are really close to those shoes, you won't be able to tell the difference. And they're still going to be durable, it's still going to hold up just fine, so there's no reason to necessarily jump full into the process of hand stitching an entire pair of shoes together, especially including something like a heel on that. And just believe me, trust me on this, that is not where you want to start. I started there, it was a lot. I would have much rather started with this. There's still going to be a lot of challenge within this, but it's going to be far more accessible and practical. It also means fewer tools, it's going to take a lot less time, and in reality the nuances, the details, a lot of the time and effort that you put into it is going to come out of what you want to do for your uppers, what you want to do for that top section of the shoe. I recommend using a shoe for your first one, not a boot. Boots get complicated, boots get weird, I do not recommend doing a boot. Stick with a pretty simple shoe. As for the supplies and the tools that you need, there are a lot of things that are very specific to shoemaking, and there's just no way to get around the things that you are going to absolutely need. I'm going to start with a list of things that you need, and as I go through the video I will introduce you to some more specialized things that I like to use to sort of take it to the next level. You're not required to do any of those, you're not required to purchase them or use them, you don't need them, it's just maybe going to make some things a little easier or make things a little bit fancier. So your basic tools that you need are going to start off with a last. This is another reason why we are doing a flat style. A shoe last is a 100% requirement. You can't get around that. The shoe itself is actually shaped and formed around the last. It is done this way in modern day mass production, just like it was historically. That is a requirement in order to get the toe to shape nicely and smoothly, to not end up with wrinkles, to not end up with a shoe that's too loose. You want this shoe to fit fairly snug around your foot. It's going to be a lighter weight style than you were used to, and it needs to snugly fit your foot so you're not sort of flopping around and having it fall off. Unfortunately, I don't have a source for you for a good historic shoe last. I have mine custom made off of a shoe last that I personally carved and sent off to this manufacturer to have reproduced. So the nice thing is that flat lasts come in a wide variety of toe shapes and a wide variety of sizes, and there are even some manufacturers that have multiple widths. I've linked a lot of companies below that offer this. There are so many more. I personally have not tried any of these because, like I said, I get mine custom made or I try to buy antiques. So that's all below. They have some instructions on some of those sites about how to measure your foot properly, how to know what size you need. I'll put other links below to help with that as well. That's not something I'm getting into. You might not be able to find a last that fits you perfectly. You might need to make some adjustments to it. That is a whole video to itself, but that is something that style-wise is much more obtainable now than it was even five years ago. There are also some great websites for the tools and supplies that you need. Again, all linked below. I haven't used all of these, but I tried to stick with ones that are reputable, that are known within the industry, and a lot of them I have purchased from, just maybe not all of the things that I linked. Brings us to the important thing of tools. First and foremost, you will need a shoemaker's knife. X-Acto knife is not going to cut it, in my opinion. Don't. It's not going to be sharp enough. It's not something you can resharpen. A shoemaker's knife will make such a big difference because it's really important to have a good knife. A bad knife, a dull knife, an improper knife is where you're going to get hurt. So get a good shoemaker's knife. There are more than one style. Most of the time you see either this rectangular style, which is one of the ones that I have, or you see this more pointed style, which I have a similar one to that I use from time to time. I'll switch back and forth depending on what's needed. You don't need both. I just learned to do different things with different knives. You're going to be most comfortable with whatever knife you buy and learn how to use. Definitely spend some time learning how to use this. I will try and step you up through the difficulty in the process, but definitely spend some time getting to know your knife and how to hold it safely and correctly and get the nice precision. On that note, also get the things to sharpen it. Get a stone. Get a strop. Keep it really sharp before you start any project. Every single time you go back in to start the next day, the next project, it's like replacing the needle on your sewing machine, but a lot more important. Sharpen. Strop all the time before you get to the next step. Just before you put that knife back up again. You haven't picked it up in five minutes. Pick it up again. Strop that knife. Start over again. You want to have a really sharp knife. Otherwise, you're going to have to fight with it, and that's that's when accidents happen. Next on our list is going to be the lasting pliers. These function not only as the pliers to pull your uppers around the last nice and taut, but also as your hammer for your nails and tacks. You're also going to need a shoemaker's hammer. This is not to be used on your nails or tacks. The shoemaker's hammer is something that is only used on the leather. It is used to peen the leather. It is used to smooth that out, hammer it down, and the face of that should be mirror shiny and have absolutely no blemishes on it. This is not used for metal or anything else of that nature. Just nice smooth surface. You will also need a cutting mat. I generally recommend the types that are the healable, but a cutting mat or cutting board that you aren't going to then go and use for food against something that's already done. That should be fine. You just need something that you can cut on top of where you're not going to worry about damaging the surface underneath, and you're not going to worry about dulling your knife. So some sort of cutting mat. Also a rasp file. These things are pretty easy to find in hardware stores all over the place. I'm not going to go into great detail about that, but this is one of your finishing tools that you will in a lot of different places. In terms of supplies, I'm going to start with barge cement. There are other shoe cements that you can get and use. Those are perfectly fine. I personally have not used them. This is something that is easy to find, easy to order, works really well. So no reason to argue with that. You will also need tacks. I prefer to use brass tacks over the iron because you're not likely to leave marks in your leather if the leather is wet. This is the particular one that you're going to see me using throughout the video. I would recommend if you're only getting one style, one length, to get one that is sort of the next size up. So that way you can actually make it through the entire leather and hold your sole down to your last at one point. I use a combination of a few different types of tacks. You will also need to get whatever sort of textiles or leather that you want to use. The upper, there's a whole variety of different options. At some point I will try and do a leather 101 video because there's so much there. But again, lots of links below for places where I get my leather. I tend to stick to goat and calf for most of my leather purposes. That is what you're going to regularly see for uppers of this era. Textiles are also a complete option. The only thing that I do want to note is that I do recommend vegetable tanned leather over the other more modern types of tanned leather. Chrome tanned leather just doesn't have the same stretch and give to it. The times I've had to work with it, I've had to wet it down a bunch in order to get the right amount of stretch to get over complex shapes of lasts. And I just don't like working with it. I just don't. When it comes to the sole leather, that also has a range of options. That being said, if you are making one pair of shoes and you really are planning on loving this pair of shoes to death, I recommend going with more expensive sole leather but getting it in the single shoe sections where you just have a pair and that's the only amount that you have. You don't have a little hide. You're only investing in enough for a single pair of shoes. You'll need enough for your soles and your insoles. The insoles don't need to be these super heavy really nice stuff. You can get less expensive insole leather. A lot of the shoe making places specifically sell outsole and insole leather. So again, lots of links down below and please feel free to ask questions. I know this is not going to answer everything for you and there's going to be a lot more videos in the future trying to get into the weeds on a lot of these areas. But if you've already maybe tried making some more modern shoes and you wanted to up your game or if you're like me and you just jump in feet first and go for it, this should give you a lot of places to start. So that will get you through most of the things that you are going to specifically need for shoe making. There are some other supplies like ribbon binding and thread and stuff like that for the uppers, but that is dependent on your style and your choices. So hopefully that gives you a really good place to start with this journey into making your own pair of shoes. This is a style that I definitely can recommend above all others for starting things out because it doesn't have a heel. It doesn't have that complexity. It doesn't have the same concern over perfect fit in the same way. And this is also a time period where the uppers they have so many interesting styles. So that is where you can put all of your effort and all of your bling. The first place to start is with a pattern. There are a few ways to get a pattern off of a last or come up with a pattern for the designs of your uppers. I am wrapping paper around my last and I'll be essentially drawing out one half of the last and getting that shape. And then I will be able to work the rough shape of the uppers off of that. You can also wrap your last in masking tape and draw directly onto that masking tape pulling it off and flattening it out. You can see me doing this process in my 19-teens shoe video. So if you want to know a little bit more about that I recommend going and checking that out. But I happen to not have any masking tape around so we're going with the slightly more historical process. If you have a last that is right left rather than a straight last like I do you will need to do this for both sides. You will not have a symmetrical pattern for this. It will need to look and feel fairly symmetrical overall. But this is a case where using the masking tape system probably works better because you're able to cover the whole last and come up with an uneven asymmetrical pattern for that last. Yes, it is fairly difficult to reduce a very curvy object down to a flat pattern and that's one of the reasons why it actually is much easier if you end up using leather or a textile that has some give and take to it with the uppers so that way you can get around those curves and end up with a fairly complex shape. Once I have what I think the pattern is going to be I'm just going to go ahead and try it out in paper. It's a really simple and quick way to do that. If you want to do this as a try-on version that you can actually put over your foot you can layer up masking tape and paper together over the last in order to actually try the whole thing out. Paper itself won't quite be enough but if you layer it up and either make this out of fabric or you can make it out of a cheap leather if you want to also get a little bit of extra work done in leather before you get to the real thing. There are lots of ways that you can make mock-ups for shoes just depends on how much time and how much money you're willing to put into that. What I am finding with my last and my pattern on this particular case is that there was just a little bit of gapping. It wasn't a lot but once I taped the paper pattern back onto the last and double-checked the overall fit of it pulling it down around the sides which is really important otherwise the whole thing sits really too big up around the top of the foot. I just found that there was a little bit of gapping at the sides which is fairly common for this sort of last. The waist part the middle part of the last gets very narrow and sometimes you will find that between the wider back in the heel area and the wider front there's just some gapping. There's a little bit more than I wanted. All I have to do is adjust the angle of those two side seams. It's a very simple fix and it's something that has to be done before you make the shoes. These things aren't really adjustable later which is one of the difficulties with shoes once you've made them they kind of are what they are. But once I have that figured out where the should sit in order for things to not gap I can draw out all of the detail on the paper and then transfer it over to a cardstock or a heavier paper. It just makes for a cleaner and more consistent and longer lasting pattern than using a plain sheet of regular printer paper. This is also a case where I will actually draw on seam allowances. So there are very small seam allowances at the side seams none around the top edge because I'm going to be binding that and plenty at the bottom at least an inch around the bottom for where we're going to pull the uppers around the bottom of the shoe and cement everything into place. Another nice thing with this particular type of cardstock or a heavier paper is you actually can cut out slits over where the seam allowances will sit so that way you have that marked through. So when I go to actually mark on the fabric or on the leather I've made holes either punched holes with an awl or little cut dashes with my knife so that way all of the designs all of these seam allowances can be transferred over to my leather to my fabric and everything is very nice clear and consistent. For the black leather that I chose it's a really lightweight split goatskin and goat is very common in this era. It's a little bit more pebbly than calf and that's what the original looks like it used so that's what I chose to go with. Marking out on the fabric I'm using a glazed cotton for this because that's what I had in terms of color and weight that was probably the closest to the original mankein cotton that was used which is unfortunately not something you can regularly find at this point in time and has a very specific color. The design for the leather is then poked out with an awl because that's the easiest way for me to transfer off the pattern but it isn't super clear once I start working with the leather it starts to disappear so I'm going in with a white gel pen and marking it out because I'm going over with white stitches. Something like a watercolor pencil is also very regularly used on leather it just wasn't giving me as clear and precise of a line as I wanted so I just ended up using a pen and then the design itself was done with a tambour hook and a heavier silk thread. I probably could have gone with a lighter silk thread and I'm definitely not an expert at tambour so don't necessarily try to copy my technique. I highly recommend looking that up on its own but I struggled through. I originally tried to do this with a needle creating the loops without a tambour hook but that did not go well. It's just going to take forever basically. Once that part is complete I'm ready to start attaching the whole thing together and I need the lining. For this I am just using a very lightweight white leather. Honestly I don't know what this leather is. I've had it for a very long time. Typically the interior would have been a wittaw which is a todd rather than tanned leather and both goat and calf are very common for this. Now it is very expensive so there definitely are other options for you in terms of lighter colors or you can use a beetled linen or you can use as you get into the 19th century a cotton twill or some sort of other sturdy cotton. The original has a lot of the ribbon that has worn away so I can see that they basted the pieces together and then they went ahead and seamed them up with a whip stitch going through all of the layers at the same time. They did not stitch up the seam allowance of the exterior and the lining separately. It looks like it was all done at once and it definitely looked like the whip stitch was more prominent on the exterior where it will get covered up by the ribbon so I put the interior against each other and whipped over those edges that way so that way that would be the more hidden part of the whip stitch once I flatten it out. The top edge as is common with many shoes of this era has a heavy linen thread or cord that is whipped over. This helps prevent it from stretching out and bulging at the sides and it will also help prevent seams from splitting open at the top. The ribbon itself typically is a 3 8 inch silk grosgrain ribbon that is very difficult to find so anything around half an inch usually does very well. I've also seen satin ribbon on shoes of this era starting to become very popular but grosgrain seems to be the winning option for a long period of time throughout the 18th and into the early 19th century. This is just top stitched through the top layers. It doesn't go all the way to the lining. When it comes to binding the top with the ribbon though, that does go all the way through and the whole thing is folded over and attached with a back stitch through all of the layers at once. I chose to have the ribbon meet up at the center front because that is where the bow is going to eventually be and it will cover up that seam. I do not recommend putting your break in your ribbon anywhere where you have an actual seam. That will just weaken that seam. The ribbon is there to make sure your seams don't pop apart. It's very important. This particular style of shoe as with many shoes at the very beginning of the 19th century has a small elevation. I'm not going to really consider it a heel. It's not a full-on wedge heel. It's only about half an inch tall. Sometimes it is just an extra stack or two of sole leather. This particular one has leather wrapped over it as if it were a heel. I don't know if the original uses wood on the interior or leather. I'm using leather because that makes more sense and it's a lot faster and easier. But down at the bottom of the leather cover there are white stitches visible that would have gone all the way through to hold the sole on permanently. I like the look of these and I think it adds a little bit of authenticity to the shoe even with the modern construction. So I am faking these stitches before I assemble. So with every hole you have two ends of your thread and the needles crisscross through that hole. This is a really nice way to take it to the next level. I'm going ahead and marking out the rest of the pieces I'm going to need to cut out. In this case, the sole. It's kind of hard to get a paper pattern off of your last for your sole shape. I start off by doing a fairly rough and a little bit too large of a sole, just tracing with my pencil straight up and down around the last. And then I'm going to actually tape it to the last, sort of force it to curve over it, and double check where it comes up against the edges. I was originally taught when you do soles to take a chunk of leather, nail it to your last, and cut directly up against the edge of the last. You can do this, but if you can cut it flat on your board, it's honestly easier if you aren't really used to using your knife a lot. So I prefer this method if I'm trying to do something quickly or if I'm trying to teach people who are beginners at shoemaking. It may not match up quite as perfectly to your last, but for the purposes of what you're doing, it's still going to work really well. I'm also marking out where I want that little heel wedge to start, because I'm going to have to cut those pieces out as well. Coming up with a pattern based off of that, tracing that out onto some scraps that I have of the sole leather, and we're just going to be building up layers. The first layer needs to be the full size of your heel. That's going to be the base. And this is a good place where you can start getting used to cutting leather with your knife. This is going to be completely covered up, so it doesn't have to look 100% perfect. We're going to true up the edges and get it to look better, but this is a good place to practice. This is really heavy leather, so don't expect, if you're working on the board like this, to get through in one cut. Sometimes, in some tougher areas of leather, I will have to cut through it a good 10 times, and I would rather do a bunch of lighter cuts than try and force my knife down in there and end up cutting off course and damaging the piece. I highly recommend with this, as with your insoles and soles, that you soak the leather for a few hours before you start this cutting process. Cutting through dry leather is not fun. I do not recommend it. It's not a problem with lighter weight leathers, but heavy sole leather, it needs to be fully saturated before you start. The easiest way to then true up your edges and make sure they're nice and smooth is to pull out that rasp file, start with the rougher side, and then work your way down to the finer side. If we were, say, doing a leather that was going to be visible on the exterior, you can also pull out some sandpaper for this, just regular sandpaper, and sand everything down. I like to make sure that I work off the rolled edges that can occur as you're cutting and working the leather as well, so that way everything is very smooth. We're then going to have to angle that wedge. It's not a chunk the whole way through, it's an angle, and it tapers down to nothing. So I like to put my piece up against the edge of my cutting mat, or the edge of a counter, and I start working at an angle with my knife, taking off that edge. You may find that it's a little hard to get started on the first corner. Turn your piece and angle it that way. If you have a hard time holding on to these pieces, you can go ahead and leave the rest of the heel still attached to the leather. Don't cut it all out, just cut the one edge out that you need to pare down. We're then going to make sure that the smooth side of the leather is roughed down with the rasp, because we're eventually going to be cementing these layers together, and you don't want smooth. That's hard to grip to. You want rough. We're then going to double check the overall width of our heel, because we need to build it up further, and we're going to need to place a heel cup in there. I found out that it's about one inch, so I'm going to need a half inch strip for my first strip. So just like I was talking about earlier, rather than cutting a half inch strip and trying to pare that down, which is really difficult to hold on to, I'm leaving it attached to the leather and going ahead and cutting that angle in, making sure that I cut all the way down to the edge, and then I will be cutting that strip off. Once I'm sure that it's all at the right angle, I can then slice that strip off, and it's much easier to hold that way. Highly recommend doing this process instead. And what this is going to do is give us a bit of a heel cup, a place to actually put the curve of the last or the curve of your heel. So again, rough up the smooth side. We're going to paste these things together, and then we're going to work on getting it to curve around the exterior edge of that heel cup. You can see I've already done one there, which I did a slightly different process that I didn't like, so I'm not going to teach you that process. We're going to cut it to the length that we need, and then we're going to cut little relief cuts no different than you would clip in your sewing, so that way you can get around a complex curve. We're going to cut out those little triangles, and doing that every quarter inch to half inch, depending on how much curve you need, will give you the ability to have a very complex curve without having to worry about wrinkles and bulges and bulk. It also means you're going to have a nice smooth edge around the exterior. You just have to make sure that you get the curve right and you have enough relief cuts in there. These layers then just get cemented together. Like I said, I'm using barge. You paint both sides and let it sit for a few minutes, depending on what the bottle says and your relative humidity and heat in the space. I live in the desert, so it only takes about five minutes for it to dry enough. Once it's dry, you'll know because it's no longer sticky. But the moment you put the two layers together, they will adhere to each other very well. If you aren't quite sure, don't press down hard. I'm also taking the moment to clean up the edges here. This may not be necessary for you. Like I said, I used a slightly different process, so I had to cut down the edges before I went in with my rasp and file. You will hopefully just need your rasp and file to clear up your edges, as long as you've placed those strips correctly. We also need to cut down the angles. Even though we angled the pieces towards the center, we need to angle the entire thing as well. That can be cut down on the board or against your body, whatever you're more comfortable with, and you're sort of slicing off those ends that are sitting upright. Then we can work on cementing the black leather strip around the exterior to cover everything up. I'm just making sure that I'm lining up where the stitches hit just above the fold line at the bottom. And just like we did on our sole pieces, we're going to make little relief cuts so that way we can wrap this and cement it down along the top and the bottom of this little wedge. Again, this is an optional piece. You don't have to put in this wedge. You can make your shoe completely flat, and in fact, if you're going with something from more like the 18-teens or later, you probably don't want to bother with this piece. And that's perfectly fine. I have plenty of shoes on this last without the wedge and back, and the sole works just fine without that piece. We're going to cut out the insoles next. Again, this is a good step up. You've cut out the heel parts that don't really matter that much and won't be visibly seen. Now we're working on the insole. If you make a small mistake here, it's okay. Theoretically, you're also working on slightly cheaper leather than your sole leather. It's probably going to be thinner or easier to work through. So this is the nice next step up because it's not going to be completely visible. You just want to try and get it correct as much as possible, and it should be a little bit easier and less stressful to cut for all of those reasons. One of the important keys with both sole leather and insole leather in comparison to just regular thick leather is that it's not fleshy. It's very hard packed. It's very solid. I prefer ones that I know I can put a stitch through and won't rip out, even if I'm not stitching the sole leather. That's how you know it's good sole leather. Once we've cut out the insole, we're then going to go around and take off those edges, angle them out. So you don't have to angle to absolutely nothing on the edge in this case. You don't have to be that perfect about it, but we're just taking off that corner, that angle. And there are specific shoemaking tools that are meant to help with this. I prefer just to use my knife. And some of those curves are a little bit complex, but again, you're working on the insole. This is a good time to try it out. You also have those scraps left over from when you cut the insole out. That might be a good place to practice first. You can see it's not a perfect edge the whole way around, but it's pared down far enough, and I didn't cut any of the actual shape away. Insoles of this era are also regularly layered with linen or cotton on the interior that goes up against the foot. I'm using a plain white linen. I'm also using the barge cement. There is a downside to this. It's going to show through the linen. It is going to stain the linen. If you don't want that to be the case, use any sort of white paste. I have Hirschklebers, which may not necessarily be something you want to invest in. You can even use Elmer's glue or any other clear glue that you want to. Just keep in mind if you are using a paste that's water-soluble, that might be a little bit of an issue if you are going to get your feet wet. Otherwise, you'll want to use some sort of clear cement. The linen, I left a little longer on the edges so that way it could fray out a little bit as I cemented it down, and then I trimmed it up. Next, we're going to start actually making the shoes. The insole gets tacked down in three places to the bottom of the last, one in the back of the heel, one at that midpoint in the waist, and one closer up to the toe. It's right just beyond where the ball of your foot would sit, not all the way at the tip of the toe. This is the point where we're going to then pull out that shoemaking hammer and work down all of those edges over the curve of your last. The bottom of the last is not completely flat, and you want to make sure that your insole holds to that and curves to it. It's also helpful that the insole leather is still pretty damp at this point, so it allows me to shape over that curve easily. The upper then will start to be lasted over. I start at the very top of the center back. I do so right in the corner where the ribbons meet so it is the least obvious place possible. The next point is to go to the center front and tack down the toe. This is where you want to make sure that you are lining it up. You're double checking that you're not skewing off to the right or the left as you're doing this. I'm then going to tack down the center back in place, make sure that doesn't skew and rotate on me, and then I'm moving to the side seams. Again, making sure that they are not rotated, that they are parallel and even with each other. If you were working with the asymmetrical last, it might be a little bit more difficult to get this matched up correctly, but if you, say, did your masking tape pattern on your last, you can mark where those side seams should sit as you take the masking tape off. So that might be a good thing to mark and double check as you're going. We're then going to just continue to work around the last, pulling each side. I don't pull the first side super tight because it's not attached on the other side, but I want to make sure that I'm pulling evenly on the two sides. And then I'm just going to keep working my way around the last, working up towards the toe, working out those wrinkles. We're going to separate all of these layers shortly, so don't worry about the wrinkles being perfect. What we're trying to do here is get everything evenly pulled, evenly set, make sure that it looks correct on the last before we get into doing anything permanent. I'm then going to start removing sections of tacks so that way I can separate out the layers and make sure it is all done evenly throughout. So I'm just pulling off the two sides and then I'm going to tack down just the lining, just that leather lining. We're going to be cementing that on first. I'm pulling it a little bit tighter as I go. It's got a little bit more stretch than the fabric upper does, so I want to make sure that's nice and taut. We're just trying to make sure that everything is smooth. Once I have those two sides done, I can move back to the toe. And this is where I'm going to again make sure that the center is lined up and then I'm going to work the edges very carefully in. I'm going to try and make a bunch of tiny little folds and you'll see a ridge in between each tack. And I want this to stay consistent even. I don't want there to be pulling that's visible beyond the edge of that last where it goes up to where the upper is. I want to make sure that those wrinkles stay just under where the sole will sit and will be hidden. I'm then going to take the time to trim back the extra seam allowance that I don't need and cut little relief cuts where those ridges are so that way I don't have the bulk building up. Thankfully with leather we don't have to worry about fraying, so you just have to make sure that those cuts don't go further than that last line. Don't go further than where it's going to be hidden by the sole. We're then able to start cementing down sections just like we started by pulling back the tacks on the two sides and getting those tacked individually. We're doing the same thing with the cement, working one or two parts at a time. While that cement is curing up I'm then going and working on the back. This makes this whole process faster that I can sort of work back and forth between the two areas making sure that I am working down, shaping, trimming, and cutting one area while the other is curing. And then once it's cured for about 5-10 minutes and it is dried at the touch I'm able to pull that leather lining up and over and adhere it well to the insole. I'm going to again make sure that this is smoothed down as nicely as possible and that's really the main point. You don't want wrinkles. You don't want folds. That's going to feel like full-on princess in the P under your foot. The next part of that is to make sure that you've hammered it down. Now these are not straight hammer blows. You'll notice I'm sort of pulling back the hammer as I go. This particular movement is really essential. It's not straight hammering like you would do with a nail. It is pulling and pushing that leather and smoothing it out as I have a glancing blow against it. We're doing the same thing at the toe. All of those little relief cuts line up nicely and it means that we have a smooth clean surface. I'm not having to worry about a bunch of bulk in the toe there. As you can see there's no wrinkles around the actual toe section so we're able to move on to the next step which is working the fabric down. This is done in exactly the same way. I'm not bothering necessarily with tacking as many places. I did tack the center front toe down to make sure it's in the right place. You can tack a few other places just to make sure that it's staying consistent but I felt like I would have a little more control over the wrinkles and the folds that were going to happen with the textile if I didn't have a whole bunch of tacks getting in my way. And I'm also not using the lasting pliers for this because I don't need this part to be really really tightly pulled. And very often if you're using your lasting pliers on just a single fabric layer they're going to fray it out and they're going to sort of rip into the edges. So I prefer to gently but tautly pull with my fingers to make sure to staying smooth. Double checking the upper side as I go to make sure I'm not leaving wrinkles on the top. It's fine to have little wrinkles in the fabric underneath. This is a very fine fabric so I don't have to worry about heavy bulky folds and wrinkles. If it is a heavier fabric I will probably want to put those little relief cuts in there too. Again making sure that I don't go so far as to have those relief cuts be fraying out or visible beyond that edge of your last. This is also a place for another tool called a bone folder. You can get this for sewing purposes as well and this will help with smoothing out fabrics. It's also great for pressing down creases as you're sewing and it can be used on the leather to sort of burnish and finish off your leather. You can get these from lots of places, linked below as always, and I highly recommend them for your sewing as well as your shoemaking. Then I'm just going in with the hammer again and making sure it is really nice and smooth. For this black leather upper I chose to not clip it ahead of time and will be cutting after it's cemented down. Both ways are completely valid and I don't really have a preference for one particular set of steps over the other. Once everything is smoothed down and cured up we can move on to adding that little wedge portion and I'm tracing out where it is going to sit on the shoe so that way I know how far I need to put the cement. Otherwise I'm just kind of guessing. You can get a little rubber eraser that is meant specifically for rubber cement. Definitely recommend that as a little extra add-on. They're usually only a couple of dollars and if you end up getting the cement anywhere accidentally on the shoe that you don't want it, it will come right off with this little eraser. Once everything is lined up, pressed on, I'll go back again and sort of work down with the hammer just to get those edges folded up as far as I can. On shoes when they're stitched together this black leather piece would have actually been stitched directly into the insole and through the uppers so there wouldn't be a gap there. Instead we're utilizing the fact that we have a nice curve to that leather wedge in order to make sure that it comes up and covers the edge as well. Next we're on to the more serious cutting of the outsole. Done just like the insole, you want to make a mark where the end of that wedge sits because anything under that wedge we're going to leave complete. We're not actually going to skive down and work off that edge. For the rest of the shoe, just like the insole, we're working around. I'm leaving it a little bit thicker on the edges than I did with the insole. That's just because that seems to be the case with that particular shoe that I'm working off of as a reference. I've seen some that are hair thin and I've seen some that are very thick. There's not a right or wrong to this. It's whatever you're comfortable doing. It doesn't necessarily extend the life of the shoe terribly much to have thicker edges. It's just going to look a little heavier. And then we'll work those down with the rasp and file so they're nice and smooth. You can also, like I said, go back in with some sandpaper and smooth it down a little bit more. The tool that I like to use here is a burnishing tool and mine's Antique. I got it off of eBay. It's a chunk of wood that I use for pressing down these edges and shining them up. This is a regular part of shoemaking and you can actually burnish the edges very dark. If you add something like a gum tragicanth, you can get things really super shiny. This, again, is a leveling up. Then, just like we marked out the space for where the wedge needed to sit, we're going to mark out where the sole sits before we cement everything down to make sure that we only put the cement as far as we need to. And then that whole thing gets adhered. Again, this is better done while it's slightly damp, not soaking wet, but still very pliable. Because then you can get the nice curve over the last shape that you need. If you have found prior to this step that whatever type of textile or leather you used on your uppers was very thick, you can fill in the gap between the insole and the sole rather than having, like, a sort of hollow space between them in the center with something like a scrap of wool broadcloth or a little flat piece of cork. I didn't have a really heavy upper, so I wasn't as concerned with this, but I have done that before in, I believe, my Medieval Shoe video. Then work down all of those edges with the hammer so they're nice and curved and smooth and adhered the whole way around. And our final step in the actual shoemaking process is, again, an optional one that I like to add a little bit of extra. It's a stamp that would have been used to close the holes where the nails would be in the actual proper historical shoemaking process. You don't need to do this, we don't have those holes, but it looks really cool and they are visible on all of the extents that I have ever seen. We're then going to pop out all the parts of our last. If you have a multi-part last or if you have an instep leather for the top, pop that out, and then the actual last and shoe get separated. Now, this is going to be easier if you get a last hook or if you're smart enough to put a heavy cord through that hole in your last. There's lots of ways to make this easier to remove. I just, for some reason, didn't bother with this one and popped the last out pretty easily and the whole shoe is there. You can do this while it is still a little bit damp. It will make the process of removing the last easier, but you have to be careful not to undo the shape by putting on the shoe and walking around in it a bunch before it's fully dried. We're then going to add the last little bow to the top, which is just a standard little bow. Lots of shoes of this era have either silk bows or little pom-poms made out of silk thread. So many different options to make your shoe unique and finish it off. Everybody complains I don't pay at UNO.