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Making Custom Bootsleeves for Your Cool Girl

I'm a novice when it comes to sewing , but I have found that a great way to practice is to do little bits and pieces rather than a full blown outfit . To this end I have concentrated on reworking existing costumes , making armbands , belts and my favorite ; bootsleeves .

I think what I like most about the design of Cool Girls is their foot mechanism , it allows quite a variety of footwear to be worn by simply replacing the bootsleeve , better still , bootsleeves are not that difficult to make .




Choosing Boot Material

Finding the right material is fairly easy as well , providing it's lightweight enough to properly convey the look of boot or shoe material in 1/6th scale . The good thing is that there's lots of material and / or fabric within easy access that'll fit the bill .

The main thing to keep in mind is how easy is it to sew , and does it drape on the figure in in a naturalistic manner . In most instances it will and does . The material used for these boots is common leather found at the local craft shop .

Needless to say , it's good to have a pattern before you start trying to sew a boot or shoe . The easiest way to create a pattern is by reverse engineering one of your CG's bootsleeves , which are amazingly simple in their design . A simple bootsleeve can be done in a couple of hours .




Cheater techniques

CG Bootsleeves typically consist of two mirror image shapes , that are then sewed together ; once turned inside out they look just like the boot and slip easily over the CG's bootfoot . Really simple design and it works great .

The only real downside of the CG Bootsleeve is the fact that you have a center line seam running down the front and back of the boot . Not a major drawback by any means , but suppose you don't want that center seam ?

For Copperhead Penny's boots I first created a tube shape for the leg , sewing the front and back halves together with the seams at the sides of the boot . I folded the edge back on the front piece prior to sewing it to the back , giving it that nice rounded seamline . The actual foot portion of the boot , the vamp , is a single piece of leather cut to shape and then sewed to the leg part . Thread is used to trim the top part of the vamp , but in actuality I have merely cemented it to the upper .




Simple One Piece Boots

If you want a relatively seamless appearing boot , you can cut a simple full boot pattern from leather , or any material where the front of the boot remains a straight line and the only cut shape is the toe , arch and heel , which leaves only a single seam running up the back



Creating Basic Pumps

Lately I've been playing around with simple non-tactical footwear : fashion pumps as the case may be . At this stage I'm working out the pattern design and testing options for the creation ; specifically materials . I've already created a pair of brown leather pumps which turned out fairly good .



Modge Podge In Lieu of Fabric Stiffener

This time around I experimented using fabric for the pumps , purple spandex to be precise . In order to get the fabric to hold shape I applied a coat of Modge Podge over the fabric which kinda plasticized it so that it would maintain the contours of the bootfoot .





Since I wasn't quite sure whether this experiment would work , I only did one shoe . This version is a bit more work than using leather due to the fact that I had to hem the top edge of the shoe . I reckon that after about another 50 of these I should have this down pat .
















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