Victorian Belsnickel - Part 3

Vinyl right sides together and soles with marked seam line.

We are having our first snow of the season.  It is hard not to be distracted by the fluffy flakes flying outside the window.  I guess it has been snowing about an hour now and the snow is just starting to stick.  It is also a three day holiday weekend, Lee-Jackson-King Day.  A cold, snowy three day weekend inspires my husband to bake.  At the moment, he is in the kitchen making some of his wonderful Kaiser rolls.  Soon the house will be filled with the smell of yeast rolls baking in the oven.  All in all, it is a great day.

Boot turned with back seam open.

Today I am blogging about making the boots.  Usually I make boots out of felt. This time I decided to use a different material: felt backed vinyl.  Several years ago, my husband decided to make some saddle bags for his motorcycle.  He is so exacting in his construction that you could not tell them from saddle bags purchased at the store.  Anyway, the scraps from the project made their way to my fabric stash where they have languished for years.  Since I was making boots for this doll, I decided that this was the time to use some of those scraps.  The vinyl was a little difficult to work with on such a small scale, but I managed to make a passable boot.  They are supposed to look like pull on boots such as a riding boot.  They looked a little plain when finished, so I added a strap and a decorative buckle.

The boot is a two part pattern that consists of a boot shape and an oval shape for the sole.  The vinyl is placed right sides together and the pattern is placed on the wrong side of the vinyl.  The pattern is placed right side up for one boot and right side down for the other boot.  I cut two ovals, one for each boot sole.  I used small clamps to keep the vinyl in position so I did not have to pin. I did not want to use pins because it would have left visible holes in the vinyl.   (Clothespins would have worked for this as well.)  The boot pattern I was using had a line that was cut line for the pattern. I cut along the pattern lines and then marked the quarter inch sewing line.

It all sounds so simple, but sewing the boot, was somewhat difficult.  The small size made it difficult to try to sew on a machine.  I ended up sewing them by hand which had its own set of difficulties.  The vinyl was thick and hard to push a needle through.  I had to use a heavy duty darning needle and the eye was large and hard to pull through the vinyl.  The area was so small that sometimes I had to use a forceps clamp to hold the material together while I was sewing it because there was no room for fingers to hold onto it.  All in all, these boots were made due to sheer unwillingness to give up.  With 20/20 hindsight, I think it would have been easier to sew it with the machine.

So I began sewing on the top front part of the boot.  At this point, the boots are still right sides of the vinyl turned facing each other and the wrong side on the outside.  Once I had that sewn on both boots  I sewed just about a quarter inch of the back seam.  The back seam of the boots were left open so that I would have room to turn the boots right side out once the sole was in place.  I sewed the sole of the boot to the top part of the boot all the way around the sole.  That was when I used the forceps to hold things together.  At some point, I could no longer get my fingers into the boot to have a good grip while I was sewing.

Finally I had the sole completely sewn on both boots.  Next it was time to turn them right side out.  Vinyl is a comparatively stiff material.  The boots are only about two and a quarter inches long (5.72 centimeters).   It took a little persuasion to turn the boots.  After a bit of effort the boots were turned and I sewed up the back seams.

The boots looked a little plain.  I felt they needed some embellishment.  I added a strap and buckles.  I made the buckles out of some aluminum tooling foil that were shaped and scrunched up with a pair of needle nose pliers.  They look like they are hammered metal.  In other circumstances, I might have made the buckles differently, but I had a roll of tooling foil left over from another project.  (The foil was used to form the metal roof of the building in the Goblin Diorama.)  The buckles were placed on the straps and the straps were sewn onto the boot. 

Before I put the boots on the doll, I had one more task to do.  If you have been following along on the blog posts on this doll, you might remember that the doll is supposed to be self standing and has dowels built into the armature that will eventually be glued into a stand.  Please note that more dowel will be glued than what is shown in the photographs.  The boot has shifted down along the dowel.  It will be pushed up another half an inch when the dowel is glued.  Those dowels need to come through the bottom of the boots.  I placed the boots on the doll and marked the section of the dowels using some chalk.  Then I cut an X in the bottom of the boot so that the dowels could poke through.  Then the boots were positioned correctly on the doll and sewn into place at the top of the boot.  After that, The pants were stuffed around the boot and sewn to keep them in place.

In a way the boots have been bothering me for several days.  It took me a while to try to determine what was wrong with them.  I finally realized that the problem was that they looked like moccasins rather than boots.  Moccasins have a soft sole.  Boots have a heavier sole and a heel.  I have not yet decided whether I will go back and add a second sole and heel.  I am not so much opposed to the work as that I am concerned that adding the extra materials will impact how much dowel is glued into the stand.  If the dowel is too short the doll may not be stable.  I will have to experiment and see if I am able to move the leg materials upwards enough to make the work worthwhile.  If not, there is always some other doll where I can work to improve my boot making.

Check back on Thursday for a new blog post to see the next work on the doll.