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labricoleuseMy decorative arts class presented their simple footwear projects yesterday, and i have a few fun photos to share. These projects usually consist of either soft shoes, spats or gaiters, or recovering shoes.
First-year Leah Pelz made these cute spats from crocodile-embossed leather,
bias-bound in a lime/white zebra patterned cotton.
Second-year Adrienne Corral created these "steampunk-inspired" spats [1].
She altered a spat pattern to accommodate a high heeled shoe.
Left: Espadrille wedges recovered in figured cotton by undergraduate Michelle Bellamy.
Right: Pumps recovered in a houndstooth necktie silk and resoled by Wardrobe Supervisor Whitney Vaughan.
Adrienne Corral also drafted the pattern for these blue suede ghillies,
which feature a stitched sturdy leather sole as well.
[1] We had a great discussion as a result of this project about the decorative element of the gears and how their sharp teeth made them effectively unstageworthy, since they would damage skirts/tights/pant-hems and potentially injure the actor wearing them. However, steampunk style influences a lot of designers' aesthetic choices and the prospect of gears-as-decor is an entirely plausible element for costumers to potentially contend with.
How could a craftsperson accommodate a designer's request for scattered metallic gears as decor? Some ideas we came up with:
First-year Leah Pelz made these cute spats from crocodile-embossed leather,
bias-bound in a lime/white zebra patterned cotton.
Second-year Adrienne Corral created these "steampunk-inspired" spats [1].
She altered a spat pattern to accommodate a high heeled shoe.
Left: Espadrille wedges recovered in figured cotton by undergraduate Michelle Bellamy.
Right: Pumps recovered in a houndstooth necktie silk and resoled by Wardrobe Supervisor Whitney Vaughan.
Adrienne Corral also drafted the pattern for these blue suede ghillies,
which feature a stitched sturdy leather sole as well.
[1] We had a great discussion as a result of this project about the decorative element of the gears and how their sharp teeth made them effectively unstageworthy, since they would damage skirts/tights/pant-hems and potentially injure the actor wearing them. However, steampunk style influences a lot of designers' aesthetic choices and the prospect of gears-as-decor is an entirely plausible element for costumers to potentially contend with.
How could a craftsperson accommodate a designer's request for scattered metallic gears as decor? Some ideas we came up with:
- Laminate the gears in some kind of contact paper or thermoplastic.
- Cast the gears into clear acrylic resin disks.
- Cast the gears themselves in a softer medium than brass.
- Screenprint the gears onto the fabric in metallic ink.
- Cut gear-shaped paillettes from mylar using a CDC laser cutter.
