Elizabeth Pankratz - Handmade derby boots 2: ‘Clicking’ and ‘closing’

Less jargonly known as ‘cutting out the pattern pieces’ and ‘sewing them together’.

This post will be long, but by the end of it, the whole upper part of the boots will be done!

Cutting the leather

When sewists cut out their fabric, one thing they have to pay attention to is how their pattern pieces align with the fabric’s grain. A piece that’s aligned with the grain doesn’t stretch, while a piece on the bias (45 degrees to the grain) does. It turns out that shoemakers have to do something similar!

Leather hides also have stretch, but unlike fabric, this stretch goes in different directions on different parts of the hide. And the pattern pieces need to be cut from a part of the hide that puts the stretch in the right places.

Back when I was making my first pair of shoes, I created these diagrams that summarised information about leather stretch that I found online (click to view larger).

The top diagram labels the parts of a hide—shoulder, bend, butt, and belly—and indicates which way the stretch of each part runs. The bottom diagram shows how the stretch should be laid out on the foot: you want side-to-side stretching across the front of the foot, and vertical stretching around the heel.

Taking this stretch into account, I traced my pattern pieces using silver pen onto the hides and cut them out (again, click to view each picture larger).

The leather used for the outer layer of the boot is 1.4–1.6 mm thick calf leather.

I had to work really hard to remember to cut two mirrored versions of each piece!

The lining is <1 mm thick pig skin suede velour.

I’d estimate that these boots used up about five square feet each of the outer leather and of the lining leather.

Skiving the edges

Before I started leatherworking a few years ago, I only knew “skiving” as a Britishism for skipping school. But it also refers to shaving down the edges of the leather pieces in areas where they’ll overlap, so that when they’re sewn together, the final piece will have a consistent thickness.

Beginner kits will often come with “safety skivers”, tools that put razor blades at awkward angles so they’re far away from your fingers. They may be safe, but they’re also really annoying to use. I got so fed up with my safety skivers during my last pair of boots that I went and bought this definitely-not-safety knife and a whetstone, and boy is that an improvement! A properly sharp knife actually makes skiving fun.

I skived down the areas of underlay on the vamp (and the quarters, not pictured), gradually thinning the leather from about 10 mm in.

Here’s another skiving tip that improved my life (picked up from the Carreducker blog): skive onto a glass surface. The knife won’t chew through the glass the way it will a cutting mat. I just use the glass from a thrifted picture frame.

Sewing the lining by machine

Here’s a little photo montage of sewing up the quarters and the heel cap/back strap. (For the lining I cut the vamp and toe cap as one, so no sewing needed there!)

The pattern pieces as cut out. The dots of silver pen along the back edge of the quarters pieces show where the edge of the heel cap/back strap piece will sit.

I used a short, wide zigzag stitch to sew the centre back of the quarters edge-to-edge. To keep the pieces aligned, I found matching these silver pen markings every inch or so really helpful.

Before sewing the back strap piece onto the quarters, I glued it on to keep it secure. I use contact adhesive (water-based, no thank you to toxic fumes), so both surfaces need to be gluey for them to stick together.

The back straps are glued on, ready to be stitched down. I love how these pieces look like weird sea organisms.

I again used a short, wide zigzag over the edge of the back strap piece to secure it to the quarters.

Finally I sewed up the dart at the centre of the heel cap. Now looking less sea-creaturey and more boot-like!

Sewing the outers by hand

I followed a similar order of operations for the outers as for the lining.

With dividers (unsung hero tool of shoemaking), I marked 3mm in from the centre back edge of the quarters and punched holes using these 3 mm pricking irons.

To sew the quarters edge to edge, I’m using the “x and bar” stitch (or x-bar stitch, a lil linguist humour there) from the Hussein book.

The outside has horizontal bars, and the inside has the Xs. In the end these stitches will be covered up by the back strap.

I’ve created more sea creatures by gluing all the bits together in preparation for sewing.

I’ve punched holes about 3mm from the edge of each piece and saddle-stitched through them. This photo also shows the inside of the x-bar stitch.

I also punched holes and saddle-stitched the toe caps to the vamps.

I also sewed up the dart at the centre back of the heel, and glued the seam allowance open.

Finally I taped over all the seams for reinforcement.

The tape isn’t for reinforcing the seams, necessarily—saddle-stitching is actually hardier than machine stitching. Rather, I like to use it in case the thinned-out leather fails.

On my last pair of boots, the leather of the quarters around the heel cap did actually wear through (because of my inconsistent skiving with the old safety skivers). But thanks to the reinforcement tape I’d used, the back heel of the boot didn’t totally fall apart then and there, and I was able to sew it all shut before the heel got any more damaged.

Making the stiffeners

Stiffeners are an additional layer of material sandwiched between lining and outer at the heel and the toe. I find their technical names charming: we’ve got a heel counter and a toe puff.

In my last pair of boots, I used stiffeners from I Can Make Shoes that are made out of thermoplastic. They do the trick, and it’s fun to use a heat gun to shape them, but they aren’t the most robust to lots of wear. I found that the heel counter in particular has gotten some cracks. So now I’m doing what the fancy professionals do: making my own stiffeners out of leather.

I approximated the size and shape based on the boot’s pattern pieces and cut two of each out of 3 mm thick veg tan leather. The edges have to be dramatically skived down to nearly nothing so that no lumps and bumps show through to the outside of the boot. Luckily I enjoy skiving now, so this step was actually pretty satisfying.

Here’s the glass base that has improved my skiving experience so much!

Here I’ve glued the stiffeners onto the flesh sides of the outers.

Joining outer and lining

Proper shoemakers probably saw the last photo of the stiffeners glued onto the outers and threw up their hands—typically, the stiffeners are added during the lasting process. The linings and outer pieces might be joined together around the top edges only, and kept separate around the bottom. That way the lining can be lasted first, then the stiffeners added on top, and then outer is lasted over it all at the end.

And for the derby style in particular, there’s also this complicated sandwiching thing that happens where the quarters meet the vamps: the curved edge of the vamps ends up sandwiched in between the outer and the lining of the quarters.

That’s the way I assembled my last pair. But the Hussein book narrates fully gluing the both vamp pieces together, and same for the quarters. Sounds a lot less fiddly, so I’m giving it a go! Perhaps I’ll find out soon why it’s not the done thing…

After gluing the pieces together, I could do the final edgestitching through all layers, add the eyelets for the laces, and finally sew the quarters onto the vamps.

The outer quarters and the lining quarters are fully glued together, and the heel counter is sandwiched in between.

This wood contraption is the stitching pony that holds up the leather for me so I can use both my hands for saddle-stitching.

I’ve edge-stitched all the way around the quarters, including through the heel strap to form the back loop.

Holes are punched and the eyelets are in! I use the 4 mm size here.

After sewing one side of the quarters to the vamp, I got this amazing amazing Picasso boot 😍

(Note to future self: It was really tricky to get the outer and the lining to perfectly align when both pieces were all covered in glue. If I do this method again, next time I’ll cut the linings a little bit oversized and then trim them down to match the size of the outers.)

That’s all for this post! The uppers are complete 🥳