And I only broke 4 needles!

My darling Colin once again decided to wake up at 4 AM and refused to go back to sleep. After 2 cups of juice, a fried egg, banana bits and 2 clean diapers, along with a lot of cuddles, I gave up trying to get him back to sleep. I certainly wasn't going to get any more rest, so I started on today's projects. I'd already cut the leather for the slippers so just had to cut lining, applique, and trim.

Since the dress is patchwork I thought parti-color shoes would be fun. Davey gave me a scrap of deep blue leather he'd had kicking around and a couple of leather cushion covers that he had left from buying a giant stack of them to re-purpose. He refers to the sandy orange as "Hastings' colored" and made me a set of lightweight cuffs that I wore with my bellydance kit when I danced with Shawaza. You can't see them in the shot, but there I am in the back row right. Wearing blue and orange. It really is my favorite color combo. I'm using the same colors for my heavy fighting armor that Davey and I are working on right now. So now I have dainty slippers to batch my bazubands and lamellar klibanion (breast plate.) The thought makes me giggle rather a lot. The applique on the shoes are actually leather pieces that I had cut for embellishing the elbows of my bazubands. The soles are leather scraps from armor making. I also used some brass findings that I got to mount on the armor as parts of my girdle for the dress, so there's quite a bit of snitching of supplies going on.

Documentation on this is more than a little iffy, so I guess I really just get to say they're not obviously out of period. The shape is similar to a shoe found in the Mary Rose shipwreck. Its the pair of shoes to the far right.

The 1540's shipwreck is perfect timewise and the shape isn't too far off, but my construction methods are not correct by any stretch of the imagination. They're the skills I learned making leather and felt baby "soft shoes" rather than a period correct type of manufacture. They're sewn quickly on my sewing machine and then just turned right side out. Real shoes of this type would have a welt and an exterior sole. The weight of the leather I've used is off, being much lighter. The dual color and applique are pure fantasy. But, I have pretty,matchy slippers and they are fun to wear. One of these days I will get around to learning how to make real shoes. Its on the to-do list but my husband gets a little nervous about me adding even more new hobbies and the accompanying equipment and tools.