With the arrival of fall, I’m back to working on the boots. As you may recall from my previous post about them, I was having some trouble getting the measurements suggested by the pattern to match my actual foot. After adding a significant allowance to the outside of the pattern, I have decided to move forward with the duck cloth prototype. After cutting the pattern from the duck cloth, I wanted to attach the sole. I realize this is a bit backward from how shoes are typically produced, but given the one-piece nature of the upper part of the shoe, I think it would be overly-difficult to add it at the end.

As the my previous attempts at attaching soles to the moccasins went so poorly using contact cement, I will be sewing the soles onto the boots. As the Cherry soling is relatively thick rubber (6 mm) I purchased a leather sewing needle for my home sewing machine and was hoping to be able to quickly stitch the sole. After several attempts including every variation of setting available on the machine, I was able to determine that my sewing machine had no interest in helping attach the sole to the upper of the shoe. 

Since my machine was no help, I am attaching the soles by hand using a tri-point leather needle and Coats Extra Strong upholstery thread. Make sure you have a thimble or other means of protecting your fingers when using tri-point needles! These needles are super-sharp and will tear your hands up in no time if you don’t have the appropriate protective gear. These are the same needles I used when making the moccasins and my small sewing kit bag and you can imagine that if they make sewing leather and rubber easy that they can also make sewing through skin a simple affair.

Now that the soles are attached, I will work on getting the rest of the shoe completed to see how the fit is and make any adjustments before making the next pair. I do suspect that I will be adding some lacing at the end to account for small variations in fit, including what socks I’m wearing that day.

Now that it’s been a year since initially making my huaraches, it seems like a good time to give a status report on them. While moving (again) last month, they suffered their first major failure when one of the tie cords pulled through the sole. I'm hoping to make a new hole in a slightly different location in order to salvage this pair.

In general, the huaraches are very comfortable, and one of the reasons they did fail was that as long as the weather was warm enough, they have been my primary pair of shoes for the last year. They get a little hot walking on asphalt in the summertime due to the thinness of the soles, but this happens rarely enough that it hasn’t been a reason to stop wearing them. 

One place I would recommend not wearing them, at least with a sole this thin, is on gravelly trails. Since the sole is so close to the ground, there isn’t any protection from gravel coming into the footbed, which is a particularly unpleasant experience. I have been considering making another pair from my thicker soling material (the Vibram Cherry). The increased sole thickness might significantly reduce gravel intrusion, but it’s hard to tell without testing it. Alternatively, I could wear close-toed shoes while hiking on gravelly trails which is probably the smarter solution.

So, if you’re looking for an easy project to get started with shoemaking, I definitely recommend making some huaraches. They’re super comfortable and I found that in most situations they’re the perfect summer shoe. 

I've decided to make a variant of the Chitimacha moccasin for the lower section of my boots/mukluks, although I'm still working out exactly what to do for the top section that wraps around the legs. While working on the pattern, I’ve come up against a problem I experienced before while making the moccasins. It seems the first pattern I made for the boots is much smaller than I expected it to be. I’m using a completely different book this time for the pattern and instructions but have encountered this same issue again. My conclusion is that one of the following is happening:

1. I am really bad at following patterns and measuring things
2. The people who wrote the books are really bad at writing pattern books
3. I have weird feet

Since I’m the one writing this, I’m not a huge fan of #1. That coupled with my previous abilities to sew and construct other items of clothing, furniture, etcetera leads me to think that it is one of the other two options. Given the fact that both pattern books have some age on them and are still available, I’m inclined to think that the people who wrote them know what they’re talking about leading me to conclude that #3 is the problem. I’m going to take another stab at the pattern soon, but I will have to add a larger margin to all of the measurements when preparing the pattern. My guess is that my feet are taller than normal resulting in the discrepancy, but I haven’t done an extensive study of different foot shapes to prove this one way or another.

Luckily, I was smart this time and tried to test-fit my foot into the pattern after I’d cut it out instead of waiting until after I’d transferred and cut it out of leather like I did with the moccasins. In my defense, the moccasins were the first pair of shoes I tried making so we’ll pretend that’s a valid excuse for those being too small. For this pair, I’m going to be making a prototype pair out of duck cloth once the pattern seems to fit correctly so I don’t spend a bunch of money on leather and then butcher it. I think this multi-step path, while more time-consuming, is going to lead to a much better end product. Plus, I’ll have a pair of casual boots to go with my nicer leather ones if it all goes well. Win win!

I’m going to try something new this year and make a series of posts for each shoe project to chronicle the process of selecting the shoe type and materials. First up, I’m going to work on a pair of winter boots given the amount of snowfall we’ve gotten recently here in Colorado. If I’m lucky, I’ll get them finished before the winter is over!

I’m hoping to use a moccasin lower section with a melton leg section as suggested for mukluk construction by MacPhee Workshop’s book and kit. I debated making a fully waterproof boot made all of leather, but I don’t think my skills are quite up to that level yet. I think having the lower section of the shoe made of leather should give them a modicum of water resistance, and as long as I’m wearing wool socks I should be kept from freezing to death if any water does intrude into my foot space.

I already have a fair amount of melton from the mukluk kit, but I will be needing to go to the store and find some leather. I expect I’ll want something relatively thick for insulation value, but with a bit of give to keep it reasonably easy to work with. This go round, I will be stitching and gluing the sole to the shoe as I still have been experiencing delamination with my moccasins. I haven’t decided yet whether to use the same moccasin design as suggested by MacPhee Workshop or to use one of the others outlined in the other moccasin-making book I picked up, the Craft Manual of North American Indian Footwear by George M. White.​

I plan on getting another update up once I pick the shoe type and leather for the project. See you then!

Just thought I’d drop a quick note and wish everyone a happy holiday, whether that’s a belated Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, the Winter Solstice, or one of the many other winter holidays going on during this time of year. Hope you have some time to hang out with your families and stay warm (unless you’re south of the equator, in which case, stay cool)!

We’re in the process of moving cross-country from Virginia to Colorado, so I probably won’t have any new shoes up for awhile. I still have some learning to do as the stitching on the moccasins ripped out right before we left the house a few weeks ago. On the bright side, hopefully I’ll have some more information on repairing shoes in the spring. I will probably be making a pair of boots soon as it snowed during our house-hunting trip and my old Vibram Bormio boots have seen better days. The leather between the toes has worn out so they get wet/snowy very quickly which doesn’t make for toasty toes by any means. Hopefully, I’ll be able to find the exact point of failure of the moccasins before I attempt making something more snow-proof. 

Thanks for sticking with me during this first year of the blog, and I’m hoping to do more posts in 2016!

It's been a little over a month since my last post, and I've been wearing my huaraches all over town. They've been performing really well. My worries about them making slapping noises while walking were over-exaggerated but not unfounded. There is a bit of noise when walking on hard surfaces, but I've grown used to it and no one has commented on it so I think it has been relegated to non-issue status. I still think a slightly less stiff soling material would improve this markedly so the next time I make a pair I'll be trying some Vibram Cherry soling.

To really put them to the test, I wore them on a hike (OK, it was only 3 miles) and then went down to the beach to cool off afterward. I didn't have any issues with their performance over the hike, and it was nice not to worry too much about getting them wet as they would dry off right away. Had I been wearing another pair of shoes I would've needed to be much more cautious about where I was stepping. 

The beach was a bit more challenging. Due to the crowds for the 4th of July weekend, the sand was not packed at all, and I gave up on the huaraches pretty quickly as I felt I was shoveling sand with them. I don't think this is was a shoe-specific problem. On the sandy parts of the hike they were fine, so I think any shoe would have had issues on the beach that day.

I don't seem to have any pictures of the shoes that day, so here are some pictures from the trip. You'll just have to believe me that the huaraches took me there!

In 2013, I started looking at mukluks for wintertime minimalist footwear, and received the MacPhee Workshop Mukluk kit as a Christmas gift. One thing led to another, however, and I didn't get to finishing the kit until now.

I started with the less complicated moccasin design given impending springtime and some mistakes because of my inexperience with shoemaking. As you can see, there are a few inconsistencies from one shoe to the other as I was still learning as I made them.

As for the kit itself, you get a short guidebook, enough leather for a set of moccasins/mukluks, some Melton wool, leather needles, thread, and wool boot liners. I'll be using the boot liners this fall when I get to making a pair of mukluks.

I found the instructions for the kit to be fairly well laid-out and easy to follow. The one place where the guide can be a bit frustrating is the grainy black and white photos which can obscure some of the finer details of the stitching. Between the video on the MacPhee workshop website and some quick YouTube searches I was able to fill in the gaps.

I started by making a foot pattern based on the boot liners thinking to make mukluks, but due to either poor sewing or poor measuring the liners wouldn't fit in the moccasins once they were finished. I am planning on using this same method for making a pair of athletic shoes, so we'll see if I just made a mistake when making the moccasins. 

After finishing the main part of the shoe, I used contact cement to attach pieces of Vibram Pro Tania soling to the bottom of the moccasins since I would be wearing them on concrete and asphalt. After a week or so of use including three short runs, the soling has begun to detach from the shoes. I will update this once I find a solution, but since soling is optional, I can't fault the kit for my delamination problems.

Overall, I would recommend this kit if you want to make moccasins and mukluks. If you only want to make moccasins you are probably better off looking elsewhere as you'll have a surplus of materials. If you are planning to make mukluks, the materials are quite nice and there seems to be enough Melton and thread for several sets of mukluks although you'll need to find some more leather if you're making multiple pairs.

I'll post a link once I get to making the mukluks this fall so you can see how that works.

I wore my Vibram FiveFingers nearly every day for two years (excepting the cold wintery days) and eventually wore a hole through the sole. I decided to try fixing them with a bicycle tube patch kit.

Materials
1) Vibram FiveFingers
    - I had a pair of KSOs
2) Bicycle tube repair kit

The Repair
Apply the rubber cement from your patch kit to the area surrounding the hole. Then place the patch(es) over the hole. This works better with a single patch as the overlapping patches I used for this repair resulted in an uncomfortable spot where they overlapped. Follow the instructions with your patch kit on how long to wait to pull the plastic off the patch.

I let the patch dry for a couple days, but it probably wasn't necessary. I wanted to make sure I wouldn't get a bunch of debris sticking to the bottom of my shoe, however. 

This particular patch job was done overtop a previous one (with a single larger patch) that lasted approximately one month before peeling on the edge and folding onto itself. The other shoe was still fine (I previously patched both), so I would say this will get you by for a short while at least.

Update: After a few more months of wear, the patches wore through but got me through one more summer with my FiveFingers. I eventually gave up on this pair and tossed them as they were also developing a rather... unique odor. Cutting a piece of soling material the shape of the hole and then covering it with the tube patches along with using a more robust adhesive (maybe contact cement) may have improved the longevity. Either way, this should get you at least one more season out of your own FiveFingers before you have to give up on them.

This post was originally an Instructable.