My niece gave birth to an adorable little baby boy in March, and I sewed up a few things for him at the time. Today there was a Sip and See for everyone to meet the little guy, since they moved back up north from Tennessee. Yay!
My Sister-in-law (the grandma) gave me some pieces of leather that she bought at a garage sale. They were selling bags of scrap leather in different colors, so she bought a few bags and let me pick through them. I knew I wanted to make some leather shoes for the little man. I loved the Robeez shoes that I bought for my daughter when she was a baby. They give them some traction while trying to get on their feet and also just with crawling and getting to a standing position.
I have lots of pieces of leather to make cute little baby shoes.
When sewing leather, I try to get out my Singer 401A…it’s a big, old, metal, heavy sucker and it sews through leather easier than my other machines. I keep a leather needle on it, and pretty much only use it for heavy weight projects.
There are a whole bunch of free patterns out there in the ether, so I combed through a few of them. I ended up using a few patterns. This first one is from this pattern, but instructions basically like these from here. If you use that pattern, the vamp needs an extra inch. The one from the instructions looks good, though.
That was the first pair that I made, and the vamp is a little short on it. I cut out little pieces of the leather and made feathers? leaves? to decorate the vamp. Remember that you have to leave enough thread to pull through to the back and tie off.
The next pair is from this pattern, though I shortened it a little bit.
I drew the horsehead and hand-sewed it onto the vamp. It is hard to sew around all of those small pieces with a sewing machine.
A little add that I did was to put some cotton batting on the bottom between the leather and the lining. Just give him a little cushion on his feet.
For the soles of the shoes, I used the suede side of the leather. That gives it better traction.
The last pair is from this free pattern at Shwin & Shwin. It was a little more difficult with more layers of leather. The burgundy leather pieces were patent, so they weren’t very flexible.
I didn’t think a buttonhole would work for it, so I added velcro instead.
Three cute pairs of baby shoes for one adorable little boy!
