I know there are still some things I’ve not yet made (like jeans, a proper Winter coat or underwear) but I have made shoes!

As you’ll know if you read my last post about my prize-winning outfit I made for the New Craft House Summer Party, I made some slightly crazy silver espadrilles from some fabric I was given at Christmas. I’d seen these espadrilles popping up online and saw that they were for sale at Guthrie and Ghani.

I used some quite stiff white cotton twill I bought in Birmingham (which I had in mind for a specific project, but I haven’t got around to making it yet and thought i could spare a little bit of the fabric for the shoes) as the lining and I also used some pretty thick, papery interfacing to add even more structure to the liquid-y silver viscose foil.

I discovered in cutting out the silver parts of the shoes that using pins left a mark on the silver fabric, so I improvised for the sewing part and used paperclips to hold the various layers together to sew them – I maybe could have just held it with my hands, but the silver fabric is quite slippery and a little stretchy so I didn’t want to chance it, especially because unpicking would have left a mark.

I can take very little credit for knowing how to make these – I totally relied on this YouTube video by Makery. They tall you through adding seam allowance to the pattern, stitching the shell and the lining together, and then how to do the blanket stitch all around the edge.

I hadn’t done blanket stitch for years and years so I kind of had to re-learn how to! It probably means it’s not the neatest it could be, but by the end of the second shoe, I definitely felt like I was getting the hang of it. I used topstitching thread, doubled, following the recommendation of the YouTube video.

There are also some little running stitched holding the front to the back on each side of each shoe – this was one of the quickest parts of the hand sewing! I love running stitch!

One really good tip on the video is to hide the knots from the thread on the inside, between the layers of the sole. You can just about make out one knot, below, which I haven’t quite managed to hide!

The only slight problem with the shoes is that the heel has slightly collapsed, and they don’t stay securely on my feet. I suspect this is because the fabric has slightly stretched out of shape.

I’m pretty pleased that I managed to make shoes, to blow my own trumpet! I feel like it was the shoes that swayed the win for best handmade outfit at the party. I don’t think these will get many more wears this year as the weather is sure to turn cool very soon, but hopefully next year I can have them in semi-regular rotation in my Summer wardrobe.

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