moccasins

Last summer when I went to pick up my typewriter from Luis the repair man in Montclair with my brothers we stopped at a lovely second hand bookstore on the same block and I picked up a book called The Real Book about Real Crafts by C. C. Roberts. It was published in 1954 and some of the crafts reference things that aren't really common place for people to have lying around their houses or easily accessible at craft or hardware stores anymore. But what caught my eye and convinced me to buy it anyway was that the first thing I saw when opening it was a series of directions about how to make your own moccasins: I knew I had to have it.

Today the fulfillment of my moccasin dreams came true. 

 With my brother Garrett here we've been doing a lot of crafting and, since I've been ditching work during his visit, there's been a lot of time to do any projects we want. This morning we made templates of our feet for our moccasins, then we headed out to thrift stores to find some leather to make them out of. Suede is surprisingly hard to find these days. We did end up finding 2 leather vests and a skirt, though, all for less than $4 each. What a steal!

Our haul.

I used the red vest for my moccasins and Garrett claimed the skirt for his since it had wider panels to work with and he has bigger feet than I do. It ended up being a lot of work and I'm still not entirely satisfied with how mine turned out, but they are more or less done.

They're a little puffy for my tastes, and the suede is a little thin, but I might add another layer of leather in the sole to beef them up a little.

While we were at the thrift store I also picked up these cute lil boots: only $4.38! That's what I'm talkin' about.

They look pretty cute with my beautiful dress, no?

There are a few other projects still in the works (I did get up at 8 am this morning, after all) but nothing else completed yet: I'll keep you updated.