I just posted a new tutorial on Sewing the Heel Stiffener. A very large percentage of historical shoes have some kind of heel stiffener in the quarters of the shoe. These stiffeners, usually a half-moon shaped piece of leather, were tacked in around the top edge and then caught into the lasting margin to keep the heel of the shoe in better shape. In earlier viking shoes, however, the sole actually extended past the back of the heel and up the quarters a little, negating the need for a stiffener. But for the majority of medieval shoes and shoes in the Renaissance, there was typically some kind of stiffener tacked in.
I just posted a new tutorial on Grooving the Outsole In early modern and modern welted shoes, the sewing that keeps the outsole attached to the welt is sunk into a groove on the underside of the outsole. This tutorial will hopefully help to illustrate the process I use to determine with the groove ought to lie.
I just posted a new tutorial on Pegging a Heel. Since I’d just finished pegging a heel lift and was so enthused by the process, I thought I’d make this write-up, as pegging is a rather critical process by which many heel lifts were assembled.
When you attach a welt to a shoe, you necessarily must then attach an outsole to the welt. Normally, this outsole is a little larger than it actually needs to be, so it needs to be trimmed off – at some point. I have always been trimming the outsole and the welt at the same time, after it has been sewn on, as shown below:
There certainly is a certain logic in trimming the outsole after you have tacked it onto the welted shoe (but before you have sewn it to the welt) – it allows you to get a perfect fit to the lasted shoe, and when you are cutting your stitching groove, there will always be perfect alignment to it. I have always cut my grove prior to tacking on the outsole, so there is always a bit of “jinking” with the outsole to make sure the groove is set up properly, but it makes a lot of sense to trim the outsole first, and then cut your groove. In fact, Garsault also calls for this exact technique.
In retrospect, I believe the reason that I adopted the method of cutting the stitching groove first is that I had never been soaking the outsole prior to stitching, which made my life immeasurably more difficult! That washtub of water sitting next to all of those shoemakers in the illustrations is not mere decoration – it’s used ALL the time! =)
Dedicated to the Research and Construction of Chopines, Pantoufles, Zoccoli, Shoes, Boots,and Other Raised and High Heels.
