Shannon wanted some sandals, like my purple octopus sandals, to wear with her Giant Squid costume at Norwescon. We made a few key changes to the design - most importantly shortening the ankle strap, omitting the toe loop, and adding both an arch cookie and anchor straps at the back.
To give a bit of an idea of how the pattern comes together, we started by wrapping Shannon's foot in some quilters cotton I had laying around, then covered it with masking tape. A sharpie made the design we wanted:
Which was used to make the paper pattern pieces.
We traced the sole of a pair of sandals she had (and liked the fit of) for the insole pattern. The insole was cut from 7oz veg-tan leather.
And the straps from 3oz veg tan. The straps were tooled, and holes punched for crystal rivets. Turns out, Tandy was discontinuing the green crystals, so I had to get them shipped in from California.
All the pieces were dyed green.
And I gave Shannon the choice of three different buckles I had in stock:
At this point, we did a fitting. I taped together the(undyed) insoles, green straps (cut extra long), arch cookies, soles, and heel lifts with masking tape to sort-of hold them all together, and she put them on. That allowed us to adjust the placement of the cookie, adjust the straps for better fit, and cut the ankle straps to the correct length.
For the soles, I used sole bend (very thick, hard leather - I cut it with my jig saw). Made an arch cookie out of EVA foam, and inserted a thin foam layer as well.
Stitched the pieces of the straps together....
And put the tabs through the slots.
In the thin foam, I cut channels, so that the tabs wouldn't make bumps under the foot (as much).
Then glued the upper to the sole.
The edge was pretty rough, but that was ok, since I was going to sand it smooth on my sander anyway. Added a couple of heel lifts:
And made it all smooth and pretty, with the sander.
Dyed the insole and the sides of the soles, and we were done!
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