"Son" he said with a nasaly voice "Those shoes are a complete disgrace! I'm going to have to write you a ticket for dirtying the sidewalk". He then promptly ripped a chunk out of a sleeping homeless mans shirt and wrote up my ticket, giving me a final word of advice, "One more offence like this and I'll give you a KNUCKLE SUPPER!"
I looked at my shoes, then the store window, then the sailors foot and shoe I was holding. An energy efficient LED light went on in my head."I am much to cheap to buy new shoes...."
"Damn right you are" grumbled the homeless man.
"....Then I will MAKE THEM!" I shouted triumphantly flinging the sailor's foot at the nearby hotdog vendor.
Now the people at the mental hospital said I was crazy (and maybe I am) but that doesn't mean that it's impossible to make shoes.
For this Wonderful project you will need...
A. One pair of shoes that fit. ( Don't worry you will only use them as a giude for sole size)
B. Medium sized rope, does not have to be as coarse as mine.
C. Large twine, preferably slightly hairy as this covers easier.
D. Some kind of waxed cord.
E. Some kind of heavy weight for holding the rope down.
F. Scissors.
G. Large wool needle with a big enough eye to thread your twine through.
H. Shoe Gloo, very useful stuff that everyone should own.
* * * * *
Now that all the materials have been aquired, we can move onto step one of this crazy scheme.
1. Grab your shoe some weights and your thicker rope.
Then starting close to the middle, you are going to lay the rope down, generally tracing the shape of the sole, but working the coils progressively outwards, until there are three passes.
Like so...
Remember to keep that wily rope weighted down while you work.
2. This next step will take you by far the longest for the sole construction.
So, cut a nice long section of twine and thread it through your wool needle. Tie the free end to one of the outer sides of the rope coils near the middle. From there its just weaving the twine around the rope (under,over, under...etc) pulling things tightish as you go.
If you run out of twine, unthread the needle, and cut another piece. Then just tie it onto the loose end on the shoe with a reef knot. Re-thread and continue.
And when you get near the corve of the end, go accros like normal as close as you can get, then start weaving around the curve.
When thats all filled in, either weave into the middle and tie off the twine, cut a new piece and start on the unfilled half. Or, weave the twine along the side of the sole to the unfilled area, and start again.
You will need to do this for both soles.
3. Well, that didn't take very long did it! So now that the primary of the soles are filled in, you can cut some fabric (flannel, linen whatever) that will just fit in the middle of the shoe.
Your going to put some gloo, right along the middle, under your fabric.
Lay down the gloo, and smear it around a bit with a popscicle stick.
Then your going to want to weight everything down and let ti dry overnight.
So after the Glue has dried or stopped smelling, grab your waxed cord (thread) and a sharper darning or tapestry needle and get sewing. Basically just stitch the edge of the cloth in the middle to the rope around it. There is no real wrong or right way to do this and realistically any old stitch will work, but I find an X stitch works exceptionally well and looks nice to boot!
Follow these steps for the "X"!
And thats it for this first installment. There will be more, but bear with me as I actually have to make the rest of the shoes...as well as document it and write the blog! But it will get there don't worry!
Thanks for reading!
