Bootie Class

Join Rachel Corry for a 2 day session to make your own booties! “Booties” typically end right at the ankle and are lighter-weight than traditional boots. You will use either Vegetable-tanned leather, or suede reinforced at the toe and heel. There are a number of hues to choose from in both leathers.

Making your own shoes can be an incredibly gratifying learning experience. Rachel’s technique for shoemaking is relatively simple compared to more traditional methods. We use a last (shoe form) to form the toe and heel shapes, and then assemble them around the footbed until the fit is right. It’s a simple enough process to replicate at home with a few small hand tools and no machinery.

During our days together, we'll spend about 5 hrs per day designing, cutting, fitting, and building a pair of dream-shoes for your own feet. This technique is great for those who need a wider, or narrower, fit than store-bought shoes can provide. We can achieve any width because everything is custom-made!

Day 1: designing, choosing lasts, making and checking patterns, selecting leather colors and textures, lining leathers, shaping outsoles, lasting uppers, stacking heels, etc.

Day 2: fitting uppers, lots of scratching and glueing, creating midsoles/skiving, attaching heel/soles, edge finishing, nailing, adding laces and/or hardware.

*Note: You may want to wear or bring easy on/off footwear for our day of working with your feet. You’ll be thankful you did! Also bring your eye-glasses as we will be doing some precision cutting.