A Tale of Two Shoes – Part 1

The weekend preceding the most recent Birka had me searching for my nearly new shoes, purchased at Pennsic from Boots by Bohemond and worn exactly once. Naturally, I couldn’t find them as the brownies have decided that they were appropriate items to take and sit on for a while.

Not finding them, I decided that three days before the event I would MAKE some shoes because then, surely, they would appear. This is the story of that adventure.

The Idea

So I had purchased a piece of leather some time ago, prior to Pandemic, that I had decided I was going to make into shoes. I have a lot of harebrained ideas. I had the upper leather but no sole. This summer when we cleaned out the garage I found my husband’s bin of “would have been” leather craft. It had a much heavier weight leather inside. I had found my soles! Then, of course, the project lingered at the periphery of my consciousness until the Shoe Incident.

There are times I’m thankful for my ADHD. I had the materials, tools, and just enough time to pull it off if I was careful and didn’t screw up. So I started researching shoes in the early period that would be fairly simple, a good starter shoe, if you will. Boots were out as I didn’t think I had enough time to finish them. Slippers were also out due to plantar fasciitis. I wanted something that would secure to my foot well and not have me toe gripping because I felt like they were going to come off. (A common problem for me with slippers that are tied at the ankle.)

The winner of the search was a 1000 year old shoe found in York and remarkably preserved due to the soil there. The find, dated between 866 and 1066, was the perfect inspiration. I was able to pull a few images from online and was able to see the hint of the triangular heel that rises into the upper. The extant piece was definitely a boot but I wanted a shoe. I decided to modify the look to get what I wanted. In the end I thought it would be easier to make a smaller shoe.

Changes

There were a few changes I knew I wanted to make to make things a bit easier for me. I wanted to take into consideration my own feet and customize the shoes so that I would be comfortable wearing them for long periods of time. The goal after all is to have wearable shoes!

Pattern Changes

The shoes pictured above have a very distinct side seam that moves in a diagonal, from right (closer to the heel) to left (closer to the toes). I’m not sure as to the purpose of the slat of the seam and, as I have a high instep, decided that this may prove a point of wear if I went with a seam in the same place. I opted for a straight seam, from my mid arch to a couple of inches in front of my ankle.

As I mentioned before, the orignals are boots and I wanted shoes. This meant that during the mock up process I had alter the placement of the strap. I didn’t want a boot so the upper section had to go and the strap was moved lower, right over the top of my foot.

Toggle and Loop

Another slight pattern change was the closure strap. The original has bone toggle and leather thong loop closure. I did not have bone so I copied others that have made similar shoes and made a leather toggle following the tutorial (posted below) I found on YouTube. Thanks to Boots by Bohemond for posting that! Unfortunately, you can’t see any details as to how the toggle or the loop that holds it is anchored in place. You can kind of see that there is some kind of leather lace or thong that makes up the loop and hold the toggle.

The easiest thing I could do is to reverse the position of the toggle and loop. This would place the loop on the closure strap and the toggle on the shoe portion. I opted to to go with a thicker strap with a rounded end instead of the triangular point so that I could make a hole for the leather toggle. The leather toggle was a bit bulkier than the horn option so I made sure the strap was wide enough to accommodate the larger hole. I did not want it to rip or pull the leather around it with normal wear and tear.

Materials Roundup

My tools for this project are all modern and mostly things that I already had around the house. I’ve heard tell from friends that leather working is hard on the hands. Since I have issues that affect my hand strength I simply used the tools that didn’t aggravate those issues. The list below is everything I’ve used in the making of the shoes. I did “guesstimate” on the weight of the leather though.

Pattern Making

Modernly, shoes are made on wooden lasts which are made to fit generic sizes. Certain places still make custom lasts for clients but these aren’t what I would call affordable. In period, shoes were also made on lasts but they were more for shape and style than size.¹

I have looked at depictions of medieval shoe makers and included the images I was able to find to see if I could find the lasts. The woodblock print on the left is hard to decipher than the two illuminations to the right. These are much easier to see in comparison. In both of the illuminations, in the upper left corners there seems to be a bar attached to the wall with shoe shapes wedged in. My guess is that these are the lasts. I have included a modern image of a shoe rack that stores shoes in the same way. While this is only a depiction, I think that the fact that both of these only have one set reinforces the fact that they didn’t have the dozens of lasts at their disposal.

I don’t have a set of lasts however I do have two feet. Include the added benefit that my feet are fairly symmetrical and I have a good starting point. So I opted to only make one pattern versus two and planned to simply flip the the pattern to make a shoe for each foot.

Duct Tape Is My Friend

To make my pattern I went with a method I found online of wrapping my foot in duct tape. Some people used a plastic bag to and taped over that. I thought it would be too loose as I wanted to make sure my shoe would accommodate my orthotic inserts and planned on taping over them as well. Instead of the recommended plastic bag, I decided to use an old holey sock. My husband’s old holey sock that was about to go into the rubbish so it didn’t matter if I had to cut it apart.

I took the sock and put my orthotic insert into the sock then put the whole thing on my foot. It felt rather weird, I will admit. Next, I used duct tape to wrap my foot using athletic ankle taping methods as a starting point. The process continued with me taping the sock so that it was snug, but not uncomfortable, as I anticipated the leather stretching over time. I used short strips of tape until all of the sock was completely covered.

Drawing the Actual Shoe

Next, I took a Sharpie and scribed a line where my foot hit the floor. This would become the sole. I also scribed a line from the inside of my big toe to the top of my shoe, aligning it with my shin, creating a “centerline.”

Based off the “centerline” I drew what I wanted my shoe to look like. (See image at left) This included the lower opening that hit just under my ankle bone, a thicker closure strap, and straight side seam. Also, I put hash marks on the lines I wasn’t supposed to cut. Next came the the drawing portion. While this was tricky and would have been easier with a second set of hands, especially going around the heel, I managed to get the job done. As you can see from the following photos that the drawing was rough and not very clean. Clearly, doing this all on my own also meant that photo opportunities during this part of the process were limited as my contortion abilities are also limited.

Pattern Removal and Transformation

As soon as I began the taping process I knew that getting my foot free again was not going to be easy. I didn’t want to make any additional or unnecessary cuts to the pattern to extricate my foot if I could help it. Using sharp shears, I cut the duct tape and sock combo down to the ankle line of my shoe in sections. Once done, I worked my foot out. It took some maneuvering and some strength. Despite it’s snug fit, I was finally able to take it off without cutting into the pattern proper or ripping the thing. I really didn’t want to have piece together the pattern more than I had to so I was happy for this bit of success.

Once free, I cut the extra off around the ankle to my pre-drawn ankle line, or shoe opening. Finally, I can start to see what my shoe will really look like at this point, which is exciting. Then I realize that I can’t cut the closure strap as a single piece from the pattern without wrecking the pattern. So I focused first on making a flat patter. I also realized I needed a side seam to make the pattern flat. To do this I marked and cut the side seam, about mid point of the outside of my foot, then up the side to meet the center line, meeting at the base of my closure strap, to create a flat pattern.

Adding Pieces to the Puzzle

It was clear that my patterns was missing a few things. I couldn’t cut the closure strap free without ruining the base pattern. In addition, the sole has a triangular piece that juts into the upper had to be removed from the upper pattern and added to the sole. Both changes were fairly straightforward and simple.

The Closure Strap

I was going to have to add the strap piece to the now flat pattern. To do this, I made a “sheet” of duct tape. First, I laid two pieces sticky side face up and slightly overlapping. Then I covered them with another two pieces overlapping in the other direction. Next I drew the closure strap onto the sheet of duct tape. I made sure to add a bit extra (slashed bit) as a “seam allowance”. Lastly, I used the seam allowance portion to attach the strap to the main piece of the pattern.

Heel Modification

The heel modification was easy enough. I began by wrapping the existing upper pattern around my foot and marking the center back of my heel. The triangle in the extant pieces don’t look very large. I made mine about an 1.25 inches wide at the base and 1.25 inches high. Initially, I was going to do a flat 1 inch for both measurements. Instead, I decided against it. I wanted to make sure that the heel would look right after it had been sewn in place and turned right side out. I added the extra quarter inch to ensure it would look right and that there was enough of that triangle showing.

To construct it, I marked the triangle with a Sharpie and cut it out with scissors. Next, I wrapped the upper around my foot again while standing on the sole piece and marked the opening of the triangle on the sole. This way I would know exactly where to attach the new piece. Removing the pattern from my foot I then prepared to attach the new triangular piece to the sole. I then ripped three thin strips of duct tape that were about 3 inches in length. That done, I laid my sole and triangle piece flat on the table. Using the strips of tape, I wrapped the triangle using the ends of the strips to attach the triangle to the sole on both sides.

Half Way Done!

With the sole and upper patterns now complete with all their pieces, it’s time to move on to leather. All of the previous steps were done on day one. The next steps of tracing the pattern onto the leather, cutting and punching holes were also completed on day one. However for reasons of loading time and breaking this into two digestible chunks.

Part 2 will contain the actual leatherworking portion of making shoes!

Bibliography

1. Neergaard, Margrethe de., Grew, Francis. Shoes and Pattens. United Kingdom: Boydell Press, 2001. Pg. 47