Welted shoe construction is one of the most common methods of hand sewn shoe construction. You will learn how to prepare a leather insole, form a shoe upper around a last (lasting), make and last the supporting components like heel counters and toe puffs, how to sew it all to the insole, attach soles and build heels.

Date: Thursday – Sunday September 12-15, 2013
Time: 10am – 4pm
Price: $750

Space is limited, please register.

There are many different types of shoe construction, the most common of which is using adhesives, also known in the trade as “cement construction.” You will learn how to form a shoe upper around a last (lasting), make and last the supporting components like heel counters and toe puffs, how to attach it all to the insole, attach unit soles with integrated heel.

Date: Friday, Saturday & Sunday July 12-14, 20-21 2013
Time: 10am – 4pm
Price: $500

Space is limited, please register.

An essential part of making shoes is making the upper. Learn to cut and sew shoe uppers. Building on the skills learned in the Profile and Pattern workshop, we transfer those patterns to leather and assemble the uppers. You will learn how cut and sew leather, finish edges, manage seams and determine order of assembly for a fully lined shoe upper. Traditionally the cutting and sewing (clicking and closing) were performed by different people, here we do it all!

Date: Saturday June 15, 2013
Time: 10am – 4pm
Price: $175

Space is limited, please register.

This course is an introduction to shoe design. An essential part of making shoes is making the upper. Patterns for the upper are based on the last itself. In this workshop, you will learn how to make profiles from lasts and create pattern templates from the profiles. You will learn the basics of drawing footwear designs and how to turn those designs into patterns. We will draw and cut the patterns from paper. Cutting and sewing leather (known in the trade as clicking and closing) is covered in a different workshop.

Date: Saturday March 23, 2013
Time: 10am – 4pm
Price: $125

Space is limited, please register.

Note that even though the nice TV anchors suggest you take care of your custom shoes (which you should) and not wear them in the rain, good leather shoes hold up fine in the rain, including the green and brown boots.

Upper is green and brown vegetable tanned leather with an iridescent finish. Classic Gibson boot design. Welted construction, leather insole and Rendenbach leather outsole. The making of these boots was featured in Tim Becker’s Life at Large segment for KOIN TV.

This custom shoe started with my client’s preference for a specific type of leather. The upper for this boot is Cordovan (also known as Shell Cordovan) from the Horween tannery. The colors are their standard black and the deep reddish brown that is so famous that most people think the name of the color is synonymous with the name of the leather. There is a lot of confusion around what it means when someone asks for Cordovan.

Horween actually calls this reddish brown color Color 8. Maybe this is because in the 1930 edition of “A Dictionary of Color” by Maerz and Paul, Cordovan is listed as a color on page 39, Plate 8, Color Sample H8.

Many people think cordovan refers to the color only, but cordovan also refers to horse leather made from the hide over the horse butt. The upper for this boot is both Cordovan leather and partly Cordovan in color.

I have made some boots and shoes in a similar style, but my client had some ideas of his own about combining the two styles. We worked together to adjust the look to his preferences. I made some designs for his review. He made some suggestions and I made some revisions. It was a fruitful collaboration, which resulted in, I believe, a very tasteful design.

Oh yeah, he also wanted to mount some sophisticated clipless pedal cleats to these boots. He didn’t want them too stiff such that walking would be difficult or too soft such that the pedals pushed into the boots. Of course the cleats needed to be recessed so as not to scrape the ground while walking. That engineering on that part was all me and I enjoyed it thoroughly.