Saturday, October 18 2025
9:00 am – 5:00 pm (5 spaces left)
ExIT Shoes — 800 NW 6th Ave STE 207, Portland, OR, 97209
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To make a beautiful shoe, you need to make a beautiful upper. Shoe uppers can be lined, unlined, or any combination thereof. They can be made of leather, fabric, or any combination thereof! This class focuses primarily on making shoe uppers out of leather. You will learn how cut, skive, 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!
Understanding Leather
There are many different ways to tan leather and many different animal skins tanned appropriately for use in making shoes. Leather is an organic material which possesses many qualities and varies significantly by location on the hide, type of animal, and many other factors. You will learn about the direction of stretch, bias, and the various qualities of a full hide. You will also learn how to select leather(s) for different parts of the uppers.
From Patterns to Uppers
Learn how to transfer the pieces of a pattern template to leather, mark and cut. Clicking, the skill of cutting leather, is still often cut by hand. Clicking is now also done with dies and a “clicker” — a press that pushes the dies through the leather, laser cutters, water jet cutters, and other techniques. We will focus on cutting by hand with a knife. You will learn how to sharpen a knife and what sharp really means.
Assembly — putting it all together
Like so many things in shoe making, there is more than one way to put an upper together, even the same pattern. Once the pieces are cut, we will consider the various approaches and sew them up! Learn how and why to use a postbed sewing machine, how to skive by hand, and on a skiving machine.
What should I know ahead of time?
No prior experience with making shoe uppers is required, but any and all experience is welcome. Familiarity with sewing will be very helpful.
What should I bring?
If you have materials and/or patterns that you would like to use, please bring them along. If not, I provide the necessary material, patterns, and tools to cut out a derby upper of a fixed size.