Revisiting moccasins...

With summer coming to a close, I found myself wanting to get my moccasins repaired for the fall. As you may remember from my first post about them, I did a poor job getting the soling material and leather to combine and ended up with the front of the shoes flapping about like a pair of hungry piranhas. This was especially fun on gravel as pieces of rock could get stuck between the sole and the bottom of the main body of the shoe. In short, make sure to get good adhesion between your soling and shoe material to prevent pain and suffering down the road!
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In an attempt to improve adhesion, I scuffed the soling and the bottom of the shoe itself with some sandpaper before applying the contact cement this time. I used 80 grit since I had some lying around, and time will tell if that was a good choice. One good thing about collecting gravel between the shoe and the sole is that I had a head start in abrading the area before I set to it with the sandpaper.

After the soles had set, I decided to add an elastic heel. The moccasins were too tight when getting them on or off my feet and too loose when wearing them. First, I ripped out the heel seam with a seam ripper. Next, I pulled the edges of the heel back and tacked them in place with some stitching. Once they were adjusted to my liking, I sewed a 1” x 2.5” wide piece elastic into the heel gap making sure to check the stretch direction was correct.

The moccasins now fit a bit better on my feet and I can get them on or off without needing to worry about ripping the stitches out. In the future, I’ll try to do a little better job of planning the fit before I finish my shoes, but this was a relatively easy repair job. I’ll be sure to update in a few months with a longevity report of the new soling job and the comfier heel.