Monday, January 23, 2012

Little Leathers for Little Feet

It has long been a dream of mine to make my own leather baby shoes. They're much better for little ones learning to walk, and they're just so adorable! I've tried the fabric kind, and while I like them, they just don't have the same look. And since store-bought versions can easily cost $18-30 a pair (and up!), purchasing them seemed less than feasible.

So, the simple solution is to make them myself, right? Right. But I've been on the lookout for cheap leather for some time, and it has consistently eluded me. I know you can buy leather scraps at a decent price, but I was nervous about taking the risk when I wasn't even sure if it would work.

And then, it happened.

A really-really-ugly long brown leather skirt showed up at our local thrift shop. I spent a whole dollar on it -- and I can only hope I didn't look too greedy as I snatched it up! Shortly after, my mother-in-law passed along an orange leather jacket that someone had passed along to her. It was in great shape -- but it was a necessary sacrifice.




I started with a pattern I had used for newborn fabric shoes (Simplicity 2457), but I only used that as a basic reference since I need to enlarge the pattern and adjust it for leather (not to mention different construction methods). It took a few tries, but I finally ended up with a pair of leather baby shoes that fit Little Man just right.

I don't remember where I found the giraffe template, but I drew the lion myself.




The Nitty Gritty

Now, I did encounter a few slight problems while making these. First off, I decided to hand-sew the lion and giraffe onto the shoe tops. With a regular needle. Those of you who have tried that before are doubtless laughing wryly at my inexperienced optimism.

After a few days of that, I though I had permanently worn off the tips of my right-hand middle and index fingers! Leather is *not* easy to sew. And I was even using light-weight garment leather.


I also had a rather large scare -- after completing my shoe tops and attaching them to the soles, I realized that the shoes would be too small! They might fit Little Man for a short time, but I wanted something in the 12-18 months range. Fortunately, I was able to tweak the pattern and use the same shoe tops without having to adjust or re-do them. So I guess I should be sure on the sizing before I try hand-embroidering leather next time!

And the biggest thing I learned: to put these together, you simply must -- MUST! -- buy leather needles for your sewing machine. Regular needles skip horribly, and you really want as few holes in your leather as possible. Leather needles actually have a cutting tip (fingers beware), so they can't be used on woven fabrics. Once I bought leather needles, the shoes went together in a breeze. I do love that leather doesn't ravel, which makes it easy to work with.






I've barely put a dent in that skirt leather, and I still have a good bit from the jacket, too. At this rate I should have plenty of room for creative license!

Thursday, January 19, 2012

A Place to Call Home



I thought it was about time we added some storage to Little Man's room -- his toys and stuffed animals were either lying helter-skelter in the corner when not in use or (more often) spread around his room in a rather dangerous array. Not wanting to shell out the money for a full bookshelf just now, we used a cheap bookshelf unit that we found by the dumpster at our old apartment. You know, the kind with the oh-so-stylish faux wood grain? This one also boasted half of the Thomas the Train stickers in existence when we found it, but fortunately they scraped off quite easily.

 It didn't have a shelf, but we had purchased a white laminated board, which provided both this shelf and a shelf for a similar dumpster find that we use as a microwave stand. With a little white spray paint, about a dollar's worth of flannel covering the backboard, and several days to destinkify (yes, of course that is a word!), it was ready to bring order and peace to the nursery.



I did try to do the proper thing with that flannel by stapling it into the backing board. But no, the staples just wouldn't penetrate. So instead I went with a far classier attachment method. I'm afraid to tell you in case you think I'm getting all snobby -- but since you insist (you do, don't you?), I used clear packing tape. See, I told you I'd sound snobby! *wink* It works quite well, and since the bookshelf is up against a well, you can't tell.

And while I loathe ads on blogs, I did have a sponsor that I must recognize. Technical support (i.e., lots and lots of spraying) brought to you by Pablo, my very patient and amazing husband!

So now we have more storage and another surface for Little Man to bang his toys into. And you may not be able to tell, but those stuffed animals look so much happier now they they have a place to call home. Really.



Saturday, January 14, 2012

Stop Reading This Post Right Now...


...and go make a back-up of your entire computer. Cloud-drive, DVDs, anything -- actually, use everything.

 Why no posts since Christmas? To be quite honest, I just haven't felt any motivation to post. Primarily because all of our pictures are currently in limbo on a piece-of-junk external hard drive that quit on us the day after Christmas. We saved all of our files to that drive instead of the computer, thinking that such a measure would prevent heart-breaking data loss when our computer got nasty viruses. Which worked. Until it didn't. Our computer did get a virus the day after Christmas, and we glibly reformatted in blissful ignorance that only a few hours later, the hard drive would meet its doom. Alas, that hard drive contained every single family picture, every one of Pablo's musical compositions, every one of my half-finished stories (and the only novel I've actually finished). We're kicking ourselves now, especially since it's rather costly to extract the data! Not that kicking ourselves makes the situation any more pleasant. *wink* So please, please go back up anything on your computer that you want to keep. And then back it up again.

 All right, I don't mean to sob all over my blog. Not only does it make everything moist, it also lowers morale. It's not all doom-and-gloom around here, considering that the weather is absolutely gorgeous, Little Man just keeps getting cuter, and I'm blessed with an amazing husband (who bought me raspberry Pim's and organic chocolate for our anniversary. Oh yes, I love that man!).


That, and I finally finished my 2,000 piece puzzle. I haven't put a puzzle together in the longest time, and Oh! was it ever fun! The thing was massive, though -- almost 3 feet by 4 feet. I had to use a piece of plywood to assemble it, which meant frequently freezing my toes off in the garage as I put in just-one-more-piece.

So we're healing from our traumatic loss, though I'll feel much better when the data is actually recovered. It's one of those live-and-learn things, and it really could have been much worse. Still, at the risk of sounding akin to a broken record -- please go back up your files! *wink*