To provide additional stiffness and protection to the external stiffeners, I applied a few coats of shellac. This is a bit of an experiment - shellac is popular with some vintage bicycle enthusiasts for treating handlebar wrap, and I though it would be a nice addition on this shoe- as it is based on vintage styles. It gives it a nice shine and didn't darken the leather a much as I feared- just a nice warm tone that goes very nicely with the orange leather:
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This is one of the test shoes on the new flat last I'm testing - just a basic slip on with contrast topline binding:
I'm still working on getting the binding consistent, but it is coming along nicely. I'm going to tweak this pattern a bit, plus I have two styles lined up for patterning tomorrow.
4 comments:
Very attractive concept! There's definitely a market for vintage-styled cycling shoes, and those look incredible.
Thanks for linking on 'Lovely'. I don' know that I would have discovered your blog if you hadn't.
Glad you like it! I hope to have some updated progress on these in the near future.
I remember stumbling across a company a while back (...and now I can't find it...) that made custom binding and folding attachments. Do you think that using an attachment to do your topline binding would be more or less consistent, and would it just cause problems where the ends of the binding join?
I wish I could make my test pieces of clothing look as good as yours... :P
Seth,
An attachment would be nice - I'm not precisely sure what a factory attachment for French binding looks like. As you know, regular binding attachments like the one you have are fairly common.
As far as the visual quality- I'm doing the tests to get the techniques right, and substitute materials can only tell you so much. The kind of yardage you go through for your garments would make it extremely inadvisable to use the nice stuff for a muslin.
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