DIY Simple High Heel Shoe Repair

Look at this face.

Meet Hobbes, the destroyer of shoes. Actually, I should give him a little credit because he has only ruined one pair of shoes, however they happened to be one of my most favorite pairs.Thankfully he didn't do too much damage to them, so instead of throwing them away I decided to try to fix them.

In this tutorial I'm basically just explaining what I did for this specific pair of shoes so hopefully this tutorial can be helpful if anyone else has similar damage to some shoes.

Supplies.First, I had to finish what Hobbes started. I removed the rest of the material from the chewed up heel, and then removed the corresponding material on the other shoe.I rolled the heel on the scrap leather to eyeball how much I'd need to cover it and cut the excess off.In small sections I glued the scrap leather on the heel and kept it taut as I worked my way up. When I got up to the top of the heel and underside of the shoe I cut a notch into the leather so I could stretch it to wrap around the heel.I applied the glue and then laid down one side of the leather.Then, using the grove in the middle of the heel, cut the excess off with an xacto knife. And then I repeated for the other side.He popped off the heel tip while he was enjoying my shoe as a chew toy, but thankfully there was almost no damage to it, so I just folded over the extra leather, applied glue and stuck the heel tip back on. Then I applied a good bit of pressure for a few minutes while the glue cured.On the other side, since I wanted them to look the same, I had to pop off the heel tip and then I repeated the last few steps to glue it back on with the scrap leather sandwiched in between.He made sure to damage just enough of the back of the shoe to where I felt like it needed to be covered as well, so I did that and added a little design element where the leather folded down towards the outside of the shoe. Then I cut the excess off, forming a little cap on the back.I did it a bit messy though and the edge looked really rough, so I ended up cutting a thin strip of leather to cover that ragged edge.And I repeated on all the edges, to make everything cohesive.And here they are, complete!

I'm pretty happy with how they turned out. What do you all think?

Upcycled Leather Jacket Backpack

I'm going to start this post off with an apology. Half of the pictures I took were taken with my phone's camera and they're not the best quality, so I'm sorry for that. Pretty much all of the "making of" shots were taken with my phone and then I went back afterwards with my nicer camera and got some better shots of the finished product. I'm planning on making another one of these for my little sister so I'll take some better pictures of that one. I've been seeing some really cute backpacks lately and I got bit with the bug to create. Most of the backpacks I saw that I liked were made of leather so I decided to take a page from my own book and use an old leather jacket from the thrift store. After searching far and wide for the perfect jacket, I finally snagged one from my local thrift store, along with two belts that I planned to use as the backpacks closures. I believe the cost for these three things was about $15 or $16.

I dug through my existing fabric and whatnot and was able to find fabric for the lining, some batting, some vinyl and a zipper for the inside pocket. Then I got to sketching what I wanted my bag to look like and after finalizing it I wrote myself a little shopping list, taped in some swatches of the leather jacket and liner fabric and went off to the store. I ended up just buying thread and grommets and just cannibalized some old unfinished purses for the swivel lobster clasps and D rings.

I don't have any pictures of the deconstruction of the jacket, but basically I seam ripped the inner seam of the sleeves, down the side of the jacket and cut the sleeves free of the body of the jacket. Sleeves are deceiving, they always have way more fabric than you would think. I ended up using both sleeves to construct the body of the backpack. For the front pocket I decided to utilize the already existing snap buttons from the front of the jacket. I cut out a section that had both sides of the buttons and sewed them onto the front of the bag. It ended up working out perfectly. When working with leather you can't just stick pins everywhere because the holes won't go away so my trick to keep things in the right spot when sewing was to tape it down with masking tape.

More unpictured steps: I wanted a special pocket for my laptop that would be easily accessible if I had the backpack closed all the way so I made a padded pocket with the liner fabric and some batting and used the jacket zipper as the closure. I reinforced the piece of leather I cut for the bottom with two layers of thick vinyl fabric I found stashed away in my fabric box. I then sewed up the body of the back and then sewed on the bottom, making sure to sew in the bottom of the straps as well. I cut, lined and sewed together the flap but didn't attach it to the bag just yet. I placed the flap over the bag to approximately where it would sit once sewed in and then started placing the cut belts onto the bag to see how the placement would go. I wanted to secure the belts onto the flap by sewing them on, however the leather of the belts was super thick and I didn't even want to attempt that with my poor sewing machine, so I grabbed one of my sharpest knives and began to skive the belts in the spots where I wanted to sew it. I thought this process was going to be quite hard and tedious, but it actually was really easy and kind of addictive.

To hide the stitches and the areas I had to skive, I cut small strips of leather, placed them over those areas and tacked them down on each side with some stitches. As you can see in the picture, I totally skived the leather in the wrong spot on each belt so one was sewed onto the flap higher than the other. That kind of sucks, but hey, it's handmade right? That proves it!

I didn't get any shots of constructing the inside, but I essentially just used the measurements of the outside of the bag and threw together a liner with that. Of course, I had to stick a zippered pocket in there as well. And a little leather "tag" with my logo on it, which probably could have been executed better, but this is what happens when you're impatient, you go with the first try and tell yourself. 'Eh, that's good enough.' And then you look back on it and wish you had tried more.

On the top of my liner I also sewed a strip of leather around the top because I wanted the main bag closure to be a drawstring with grommets and I thought having it go through leather rather than fabric would look and function better. There will be better pictures of this later on in this post.

I stuffed the inner fabric into the backpack and sandwiched the top flap and the upper strap loop between the outside leather and the inner leather and sewed it up nice and clean around the edge. From there I poked 8 holes around the top of the bag and hammered the grommets in place. I sewed up a thin piece of leather, threaded it through and sewed on a piece of leather to act as the stopper part of the drawstring.

I made the straps adjustable like normal backpack straps are but at the end I attached the swivel lobster clasps. Those then could be connected to the upper strap loop. Thinking about it afterwards, it doesn't really serve that much of a purpose, to be able to unclasp the straps from the backpack; I just thought it was a neat idea.

Anyway, from there I tried the thing on and realized the straps were kind of thin. They're maybe about an inch wide and I thought that with a full backpack they would totally cut into my shoulders and be uncomfortable, so I made little strap pads and slid them in place. Worked like a charm and then my bag was complete!

So from now on these will be the better quality pictures.

And here's the finished backpack! I love how the belt closure turned out. The little metal embellishment on the belt on the left is pretty cool too!

Here's the back, and in this photo you can more clearly see how the back straps connect to the top and you can also see how the strap pads look on each side.

Another feature on the back is the padded laptop pocket.

And here's an action shot with my laptop halfway in the bag. Ooo, exciting!

Here's a shot looking into the bag. If you look closely on the left next to my finger there is a tiny loop with another tiny swivel lobster clasp which I put in for one purpose, and that is to simply hold my headphones if I'm taking them with me.

Like so.

Here's another photo of the bag opened, but it's laying flat and there's no headphones in the shot so it's different enough.

Here you can see the lining fabric for the flap. I ended up reinforcing it with one layer of vinyl because I thought if I didn't then it would be weirdly floppy, so to keep that in place I quilted it together with the liner fabric. I used this opportunity to make a nice chevron type of pattern.

I used some of the leftover leather to make a big tassel because, why not? And I attached it to another swivel lobster clasp (man I just have those things everywhere) so that I could stick it wherever on the bag I want to. Unfortunately it's a silver clasp, not gold like everything else on the bag, but oh well. I was working with what I had at that point.

Here are some cool angled shots of the front and back of the backpack.

And to end this I shall throw in this photo of my dog, Hobbes, enjoying the backpack as much as I do! (Lookie there behind the pup! Yup, I still own those letter pillows I made a few years ago!)

And that's all folks! I hope you all like this backpack as much as I do. I plan on making another one of these backpacks and will be taking better pictures of the progress of it, so please stay tuned for that!

Upcycled Leather Jacket Purse

I've been craving a leather purse recently, but they're always too pricey for me, and I would feel too bad about buying a brand new leather purse when there are plenty of used leather things sitting at thrift stores just waiting for a new life.  While browsing through clothes at a Goodwill while I was out of town last week, I found a jacket that I was convinced would work perfectly for the type of bag I wanted to make.  My boyfriend thought it wouldn't be enough material, but he was wrong - he should know by now not to doubt me. :) So here is the jacket I bought.  A nice deep brown leather jacket.  $13.  Perfect. 

I've actually been lusting over a specific purse, so I thought to myself that it would be good to use that bag as a rough blueprint for the purse I was going to make.  Here is that purse:

The Lucky Brand Abbey Road messenger-type bag.  It's convertible.  You can use it as either a cross body bag or you could tuck the longer strap away and use it as a hand held bag with the smaller straps.

And it's $178.

So that was my mission, to make a similar bag with the jacket I got.

And I think I did a pretty damn good job of it for my first time working with leather this way.Front.  I used the existing pockets to my advantage.  You can never have too many pockets on your purse.The best part about making your own purse while using an inspiration is that you can put things where you want them.  In the original bag, the zipper was in the front and hidden by the folded over flaps, but I prefer the outer zipper to be on the back so it's more easily accessible to me.

Here's what it'd look like if I were to be holding it with the smaller straps.  I made the short straps just long enough so I could put it over my shoulder if I felt like it.  I believe the straps aren't long enough to do that with the original bag.Adjustable length straps.  Even though I'll probably only use one length every time I use it, at least I'll have the other option.And opened!  You can probably see some parts where I could have put it together better, but I wasn't sure how.  Example, the stitching along the top, on the lining.  It was to attach the top piece of leather with the straps.  It was kind of a "plan B" thing.  I originally wanted to attach it by folding the leather in and doing a nice top stitch across it, but I didn't cut the piece long enough and I didn't have enough left over to cut that shape again.  So thought I'd just leave it with the raw edge and do a nice decorative stitch over it so it wouldn't look too bad.  Good idea, not very good results.  My sewing machine didn't appreciate trying to do decorative stitches with thick-ish leather.  Oh well.  I just sucked it up and dealt with it.  I was getting too frustrated with it and didn't want to take it all out and try to redo it because it would poke too many holes in the leather and I was worried it would make it too weak there and possibly tear.Here's a close up of my little tag I made.  I have tags made out of ribbon, but I thought it wouldn't match the purse very well.  In the original bag they have their logo stamped out on leather.  Unfortunately, I don't own a leather stamping kit.  I decided to do the next best thing, which was to burn my name into the leather.  I don't know what happened to my wood burning tool, so I used my soldering iron to do this.  Very. Carefully.  You can't see it very well in this picture, but the letters are slightly recessed which makes it look very nice.  This is probably the part I'm most proud of.

And here's an action shot of it so you can see how big it is and where it sits on the body when worn.

Aside from a few little things, I love how it turned out.  I love that I was able to upcycle some leather and make a decent bag out of it, and I think I'm addicted now.  I'm already getting ready to make another upcycled leather bag for my boyfriend's mom.

New Suede Shoe-Slipper-things

I was lurking around on the internet the other day and came across these viking shoes.  As I scrolled through the post, I saw it was a tutorial on how to make them, so of course I had to make some myself.  I went out to my craft store and bought some leather remnants for less than$5 and hoped there would be enough to make a pair of shoes. Before I cut into the leather, I made a pattern out of felt and put it together.  I made some modifications to the original pattern to try to make them into flats instead of sandals and I wanted to make sure it would work.

Here's the pattern all put together

Drawing the pattern out on the leather.  I had JUST enough!

All cut out.

Rounding out the little tab things.

With a marker, I marked out where the holes should go.

Here I am, wishing my boyfriend still had his leather hole punch.

The exacto knife worked alright, here are the holes!

The leather cord was more expensive than the scraps of leather I bought!

Lacing up the back.  If you make these, make sure you pay attention to how you're supposed to thread it, I messed up a LOT on this step.

Lacing up the toe area.

Almost done!

All done and pretty comfy!

Back.

Front.

I think these things are pretty cute and they're quite comfortable.  It's just thin leather though, so these ones are more suitable to just be house slippers.  I'm thinking about ordering some thicker leather and maybe a shoe sole or something to see if I can make something that would be fit for wearing outside.