Did I mention that I was making some new shoes? I suspect that might be one of those things that I only mentioned on Facebook and Instagram, while I was having a bit of a break from the blog. I started working on them back in April, with some lovely wool felt from Cloud Craft.
I’d originally wanted to make my own felt, but my hands and shoulders haven’t been well enough to allow that, so I decided to bite the bullet and buy some. I love the combination of felt and embroidery (I seem to be doing that a lot these days!), and I figured that I could use the techniques from my original fabric shoes to make something a bit more robust.
This turned out to be very nearly the case. These are just lacking their rubber outdoor soles, and they look really good on the lasts – if I do say so myself!
Unfortunately something went a bit peculiar in the sizing department. When I took them off the lasts and put them on my feet, they were enormous! By this time I’d already taken orders for ten prototype pairs, so I could thoroughly test the techniques before letting them loose in my Etsy shop. Obviously I couldn’t make ten pairs of shoes that didn’t fit their recipients, so I decided to bite the bullet and borrow enough money to allow me to order some lasts.
I found the perfect style at Shoe Last Shop, a company which specialises in selling small quantities of lasts to shoemakers without factories, who aren’t mass-producing thousands of pairs. I’ve ordered a full set of these, in European sizes 32 to 45. I suspect that the smallest and largest sizes will get a lot of use (which is why I wanted them), as most commercial shoe ranges only include sizes 36 to 41, sometimes up to a 43 if you’re lucky.
I was expecting to have ten finished pairs of shoes to show you by now, as the lasts were scheduled to arrive just over a month ago! Sadly there have been some production delays at the factory, and I’m going to have to keep people waiting a while longer, which I really don’t like. It’s bad customer service on my part, even though there’s nothing I could have done to fix it. (Well, except for not having taken the shoe orders, even for prototypes, until I had the lasts in my hands.)
Thankfully, I received an email yesterday to say that the production backlog had been caught up, and my lasts should be shipping in the next couple of days. I have a huge pile of felt read and waiting, so as soon as they turn up I can make new upper patterns to fit them, and get a move on with the shoes!