Bein' Crafty

I made some minimal shoes. Moccasins actually. I used this guy's blog as my basic design, but modified a couple of things.

I bought some nice thin (perhaps too thin) deer hide and a couple of tools. I actually didn't end up needing an awl to punch sewing holes, because the hide was so thin and soft.

I began with a pattern made out of an old pillow case to make sure of the measurements rather than wasting the hide.

pattern out of pillow case

buckskin patten

I had to teach myself the pucker stitching technique for the toe. It took some trial and error, and it's still not perfect, but it'll do.

pucker toe stitch is a bitch

I used a running stitch for the other parts. I wet them and wore them for most of a day to get them fit to my feet.

heel tab

uppers sewn on

billows added to the tongue (to keep out debris)

The soles are very thin and needed reinforcement. I couldn't find shoo goo on my first try, so I used another type of glue to affix some sand to the bottom to hopefully keep the soles from wearing through so fast and to add a bit of traction.

glued on sand

I'm pretty happy with this first project of shoe making. These will make great footwear for around camp.

fin!