With the line drawing for 13th C shoes and a side buckled boot I took measurements of my friends feet and started working on drafting a pattern. The measurements I found useful were:1) Outline of socked feet.
2) Around the widest part of the toes.
3) Around the arched section of the foot.
4) Around the Ankle.
5) Around the thickest part of the calf
6) Height from sole of foot to bottom of the knee.
7) Height of foot from sole to ankle.
8) And lastly, the length of the top of the foot from tip of the longest toe to the front of the ankle.
First I made a paper pattern on cardstock, taping extra pieces together to get the length required. Then I made a fabric mockup to test the shape and sizing. The first mock up led me to make some changes to the basic pattern I was using from the Footwear site.
1) The leg portion went from a single piece of leather to two pieces of leather. One piece that was the width of the distance from side to side of the ankle and the height of the leg from ankle to knee. The second piece was straight on one side and sloped on the other, being narrower at the bottom than at the top. It was also an inch shorter that the other leg piece to allow it to wrap over the top of the foot. After discussion we opted for 5 straps and buckles instead of the 10+ shown on the drawing linked above.
2) A tongue was added to cover the top of the foot where the "v" opening in the foot portion of the pattern. Thinking about it all after the fact I expect the author of the site expect that v to wrap around the ankle.
3) The drawing suggests they were slipped through slots in the leg pieces and only attached at the beginning and end. All the stress of buckling is on the straps but should they break they can be replaced. Instead I sewed the straps all the way around the outside of the leg leathers. The straps sewn on like this allow the leathers to be tighten up completely to wrap more snugly around the wearers legs.
After some tweaks to the pattern and another set of mock-ups seen in the top to pictures linked, we decided it was more or less exactly what the person was looking for. He purchased a deer hide and told me to use what I needed to use. At this point I became rather paralyzed with fear. I was very much afraid to cut out the pattern in the leather and make mistakes, resulting in wasted leather.
A few weeks passed where the leather and pattern sat on my work bench and dared me to start. Which I eventually did. I laid the leather out and carefully cut out each piece, labeling it left or right as I went, using a Olfa rotary wheel. I allowed 1/2 inch for seams, since I was planning on sewing this on my sewing machine. Luckily I own an industrial strength machine and with a larger needle and some nearly unbreakable thread I was able to do 90% of the sewing on the machine.In the leather version I allowed a full inch around the foot so that the owner could take them to a local cobbler and have a modern sole sewn on. That is why the foot looks so loose in the pictures to the left, compared to the picture of the fabric mock-ups.
He is pretty happy with them and truthfully I am glad they turned out as nice as they did. I learned quite a bit about drafting a pattern based on a drawing, learned about the shape of the foot and how it effects the way the shoe looks, and even learned how leather and fabric differ. I think at some point I want to carve out a pair lasts , wooden foot shapes, and see how different make a pair of shoes that way is to basic turn shoes.
