Slippery

Yesterday our local barony had arranged a shoe-workshop, held at my place (very convenient since I was alone with the kids over the weekend). Eric, who held the workshop, brought his copy of the wonderful book "Stepping through time", with lots and lots of pictures of shoes in pieces from almost all historical times. So inspiring! So Eric convinced me that it is not that scary trying to make ones own shoepattern from a picture. And I have yearned for a pair of indoor slippers, as can be seen in this illustration:

You didn´t look under  the bed, did you?

So I found this little slippery shoe in the book, but I think I will make mine without the overfolding backpiece.

Excellent start! Eric then suggested that I make a model in fabric first, to try it out. Said and done, I brought some denim out in order to make a tryout. It turned out rather well after some fitting and adjustment.

Some pieces to begin with.

Stitched together and fitted.

Model slipper

Cutting the leather

Ready to do the piecing together.

I decided to make the entire slipper in soft leather without the hard sole, I will only use them indoors or in the pattens, simply for comfort and to protect my hose from wear and dirt.

It is all in the preparations, right?

OK, I´m no fan of basting, fitting, re-doing, fitting, basting some more... But this project needs patience and a lot of looking into the details. I did a whole lot more research, planning and discussing on this one than ever before, I´m normally the "lets get these scissors into that fabric asap and see where it will take us"-kind of gal, which many of my friends can testify.

So this is surely a challenge for me, still in the toille-stage and no where near getting that done, by the looks of it.

This is how far I have gotten now:

I took the bra-cup apart to use the pieces for the pattern.

This is the toille-pieces for the boob-bags, after some fitting
 and adjusting of size and shape.

I cut out holes in the front-piece, starting with leaving a bit on the top
 to try it out with fitting the boob-bags in first.

This is the boob.bags basted together, fitted and pinned to the frontpiece.

All basted together.

Next in line for some fitting and cutting - the backpiece.

Here we go!

This Saturday we had our second sewing circle dedicated to fitted underwear. Åsa had gotten a long way and brought her already fitted boob-bags for help with fitting the bodice. I started with cutting out a front and back-piece, roughly shaped after the new toille but in two pieces instead of four. Then I had to mark were to make the cut-outs for the boob-bags. As we had discussed last time and Åsa had tried, I used an underwire-bra to mark the size and shape. Since all my underwire-bras are to big cup-wise nowadays, I decided to simply sacrifice one and split it in order to make a pattern. Of course some fabric had to be added and a lot of fitting had to be done, but Åsa was a great assistant. And I aimed for a small cutout to begin with, since it is easier to cut out more as you go than the other way around.

To be sacrificed for science

A good and simple way to measure

Marked and ready for the cut

 To be continued...