Wednesday, October 06, 2010

Homemade shoes from recycled stuff part II

Homemade shoes 2nd try I've made a second pair of homemade shoes. I think they came out pretty much like the first pair. But after 5 tries, I am pretty happy to have come out with another pair at all.

I used a pair of old swim trunks from the thrift store for the fabric. I also used a table pad for stiffening on the inside and gross-grain ribbon for the eyelets for the shoelaces. I need to get longer shoelaces. The ones shown are the ones that were on the swim trunks, cut in half. The uppers are glued to flip-flop soles like the last pair.

Things I don't like about these shoes is the wrinkle in the left shoe and the right shoe feels a little too tight over my big toe. They are slightly sock eaters but not drastically so. I made the tongues too short so they don't stick up over the laces, which doesn't look good, but you can hardly notice.

Things I like are the looks. I like how the backs of the heels are different on each pair, thanks to the swim trunk fabric. I think they came out really well considering I have no idea what I'm doing.

I will walk around in them for a while and decide if I want to glue a boot sole on them and use them for hiking. Although it would seem that swim trunk fabric isn't very durable, I did line the shoes with padding so they should hold up well. Not every part of the interior is lined, so my feet can breathe, but much of it is.

My next try will be one more attempt at the fisherman's sandals. I downloaded a pattern for fisherman's sandals here. I am going to try making them from recycled plastic bags instead of leather or fabric.

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