/cgl/ - Cosplay & EGL

>>6889955

It was actually pretty easy. It's all just rubber cemented down. I looked up some shoe-making tutorials and applied some of the concepts to this. I think I spent like $15 on the suede too and I probably have enough left over that I could theoretically make another pair. So, it's not ludicrously expensive either.

I don't think I took enough progress shots to do a tutorial, but basically I covered half the shoe in tape to create a pattern (most shoes are actually symmetrical, once flattened, so you only have to do one side) and then tested it with paper towels (sounds silly, but it bends to curves better than paper but is stiffer than muslin, and you can use the perforation to get a really accurate cut-on-the-crease). Then I cut pieces from the suede with liberal 'seam allowance' and applied the rubber cement to fold over the edges on one side (you don't need to bother on the parts that overlap), you could sew this but the rubber cement works well enough, unless you want stitching. And then I applied the pieces to the shoes from top to bottom (like the toe and heel caps are the last/top most layer, if that makes sense) and with the pieces near the bottom edge of the shoe, you stretch them across the contour and then trim the excess leather once the cement sets. The lining is just glued in because I wasn't sure how the shape would turn out and wanted to be able to 'sculpt' the top edge a bit, but ideally that'd have been sewn (it's not really even across the shoes, unfortunately).

Anyway, I know a lot of people are a bit hesitant to work with leather, but it's a nice material. It's not (always) as expensive as it seems and it's a really nice material for 3D shapes since it stretches pretty nicely. Most of the shoe pieces were small enough that I could have gotten them out of remnants honestly, but I needed particular colors.