...FIRST HEEL...

We finally get to make a heel! It's not the styliest of heels but a heel nonetheless.

I'll be posting showing each step of making these.

First we need to make a shell forme. This means cutting blue architectural trace to the general shape of the last (the foot shaped model we make the shoe around-you can see it drawn in the above pic.), wetting it, carefully wrapping it around the last and drying it with a heat gun (hence the small burn marks in the picture below). 

Then we draw the centre lines and design lines onto the shell forme both measuring and going by eye. We actually judge by eye more than I expected in shoe design... Unless the design is asymmetrical you only draw on the outside half. This design has the contrast detail that wraps around, so that needs to be drawn in.

When we've finished drawing we slice down the centre lines (effectively cutting the shell forme in half) and put a few notches around the toe. Flatten it out onto a piece of paper and we have a three dimensional form in 2D - this is what we make the patterns from. 

More to come soon...