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Project: Casting your own shoe lasts
May. 7th, 2010 09:44 amOne of my graduate students, Samantha Coles (a rising 2nd-year), has a very specific area of focus: custom cordwaining.
She's taking the usual courseload for an MFA in Costume Production in terms of classwork in draping, tailoring, millinery, and so forth, but her longterm goal is one of shoemaker, and whenever we get shoe projects for mainstage shows, I kick them to her (ha ha, bad pun), for her portfolio and work experience. So, for example, in the recent Importance of Being Earnest, she did a shoe modification for Ray Dooley as "Lady Bracknell," turning a pair of what was essentially a men's-sized character shoe into a period court shoe with an ornamental vamp.
Now that summer's here, she and i devised plans for some independent projects we hadn't time for during the mainstage season and school year. One of these was to explore the last-casting method devised by Mary Wales Loomis in her book, Make Your Own Shoes.
A shoe last is kind of like a cross between a dress form and a hat block, but for feet. It is the matrix upon which a shoe is constructed. As with hat blocks, you need a last for every permutation of a style, so if you are going to do a single shoe design for retail, you need a right and left last for every size you are going to release. Custom couture shoemakers like Louboutin will cast the feet of their bespoke clients and make lasts specifically for a single patron.
Loomis outlines a method in her book for casting shoe lasts in plaster from existing damaged shoes you love. You have to be willing to sacrifice a pair of shoes to this project, but on the upside, if you succeed, you have lasts from them on which you can build lots of future pairs just like them or similar in fit/feel.
In addition to your pair of sacrificial shoes, this method requires the following supplies: tape, plaster, water, utility knife, crappy funnel, petroleum jelly or other mold release, and finishing tools like sandpaper, rasps, and chisels. It also requires a willingness to get messy, and i thought that some points we were helped by having two pairs of hands, so if you can partner with a pal or colleague, that's probably best.
We figured that a pair of lasts takes about four cups of plaster and two cups of water, and that mixing batches any larger than that was not practical--it just sets up too fast. And, if you try this, be sure to clean up your mixing bowl between batches, or the catalyzing happens so fast you can't get the stuff mixed and poured.
( photos of the process! )
She's taking the usual courseload for an MFA in Costume Production in terms of classwork in draping, tailoring, millinery, and so forth, but her longterm goal is one of shoemaker, and whenever we get shoe projects for mainstage shows, I kick them to her (ha ha, bad pun), for her portfolio and work experience. So, for example, in the recent Importance of Being Earnest, she did a shoe modification for Ray Dooley as "Lady Bracknell," turning a pair of what was essentially a men's-sized character shoe into a period court shoe with an ornamental vamp.
Now that summer's here, she and i devised plans for some independent projects we hadn't time for during the mainstage season and school year. One of these was to explore the last-casting method devised by Mary Wales Loomis in her book, Make Your Own Shoes.
A shoe last is kind of like a cross between a dress form and a hat block, but for feet. It is the matrix upon which a shoe is constructed. As with hat blocks, you need a last for every permutation of a style, so if you are going to do a single shoe design for retail, you need a right and left last for every size you are going to release. Custom couture shoemakers like Louboutin will cast the feet of their bespoke clients and make lasts specifically for a single patron.
Loomis outlines a method in her book for casting shoe lasts in plaster from existing damaged shoes you love. You have to be willing to sacrifice a pair of shoes to this project, but on the upside, if you succeed, you have lasts from them on which you can build lots of future pairs just like them or similar in fit/feel.
In addition to your pair of sacrificial shoes, this method requires the following supplies: tape, plaster, water, utility knife, crappy funnel, petroleum jelly or other mold release, and finishing tools like sandpaper, rasps, and chisels. It also requires a willingness to get messy, and i thought that some points we were helped by having two pairs of hands, so if you can partner with a pal or colleague, that's probably best.
We figured that a pair of lasts takes about four cups of plaster and two cups of water, and that mixing batches any larger than that was not practical--it just sets up too fast. And, if you try this, be sure to clean up your mixing bowl between batches, or the catalyzing happens so fast you can't get the stuff mixed and poured.
( photos of the process! )
