4 Design Solutions That Will Make Your Shoes Look Better

It take time to get better in any craft, in any work, practice, practice and then more practice. That is true and you can't go around it, you don't wake up one day to be a professional shoemaker, it takes time, but what can we do until then?

In today's post I will show how you, using design can fix already made mistakes with your shoes and how using design you can prevent issues that you struggle with during your shoemaking process.

During my work as a designer and design courses that I do, I figured out that people have wrong perception of what design is.

Design is not about making cute and pretty drawings of shoes, you been misled and missing the most important point that can help you in your process.

Design is a technical plan for your footwear construction. It's about knowing how technically you can and should construct your shoes, how each part should be connected so your shoes will be wearable, comfortable and beautiful.

If design is a technical thing that means that you can adjust your design to help you, to be your solution to get better looking shoes.

Design solutions 

1. Topline inside seam - If your sewing skills slowing you down and your top line seam always has curved waves, which sure don't compliment your shoes, make an inside seam.
Sew your upper from the inside and then just turn it over, this way if you even made a curve line you still can adjust it without anyone knowing it's there.

2. Welted strip- When you stumble upon situation, where you made not so accurate, not very clean work with your outsole, not a good job in general!

Maybe you sand the bottom to much or if after attaching the outsole you usually can see the glue or you always skive it to much. The solution is simple, create welted strip and attach it to your bottom, the strip will hide any mistake that you usually make there.

You can plan it from the start or you can adjust your design if this situation occurs.

3. Elastic bend solution- I personally love to use elastic bands in my footwear just because it gives so many options to what you can do.

But, if you have a very wide last and no matter what you do your topline is always lose, first make sure that the problem is with your wide last and not mistake that you made with your pattern.

The solution is, to place elastic band inside your topline, it will tight up the upper and it will sit perfectly on the foot.

4. Lasting ripped- Lasting is a difficult process and you do need to practice to do it well. When using very thin upper, during lasing you can over do it.

It happens, especially when you are a beginner and you eager to make perfectly fit shoes.
You don't need to start all over again, just change the design. You can make toe cap shoes.

It will always be elegant and fashionable shoes. Create new toe pattern, cut the unnecessary front part, skive it and stitch it together.

The wonderful thing about design technical solutions that they are very creative and will make your footwear to look great.

I will think of more design solution and will share them on my Twitter, so follow me on twitter to get more design updates and not just, for the last month twitter became kind of my ideas writing tool, so get in touch on twitter.

 Let's see what you think in the comment below.

Have a great weekend 

Sveta Kletina

Ballerina Shoes Course and What Else Shoemaking Platform Have to Offer

One of my favorite courses that I teach on my shoemaking courses online for beginner level is about to end soon. It came out unexpected long, because I tried to explain and to show as much details as I could, so that you can easily make your first pair of shoes. The most important thing to me was to make it clear and understandable,  all the  shoemaking process, so that  in the you will be able to make pattern, to sew, to last, and to create heels by yourself. Only one lesson separates us from complete pairs of shoes where you will learn how to finish them, how to take them of  the last and to make the insole. You can see below some sneak peeks from this course. 

Quick note:  Because many of you don't have good connection with internet and asked me about this possibility. In short a time I plan to unit all these lessons together (it is more than 10 hours long) to create a DVD or eBook of Ballerina Shoes . It will take me time, but I will do it and you will able to purchase full ballerina shoes course on my blog here.

 Another exciting process which I'm working on now is that I'm negotiating with suppliers of various materials and tools for shoemaking , so in a really short time (maybe even next week)  they will be available on www.shoemakingcoursesonline.com.  I've been working on it for some time but I could never get it done , but now with the development of my new platform it has become finely possible to do it.
My faithful members of this platform, makers, shoemakers  will benefit from this even more; they will be able to purchase instruments and materials for shoemaking with a member discounts. And now since I have accumulated a lot of work because I was sick last week, I need to get back to work.

Good luck and have a nice day!

Sveta Kletina

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More Shoemaking Courses For Members Only

Finding the right time or anytime at all to write a post is kind of a big deal this week, and all do with shooting the online courses. I'm not complaining , not at all, but I had no idea, how hard it is. Although I have big experience shooting my YouTube videos, this is nothing like that. Light, sound, shooting, close ups, full shoots and all a lot of terminology that I don't understand gave me a different perspective and a huge amount of respect to people of this profession and my team, thank you. 

Now, if I'm in a thank you mode, I want to thank you all who pre-registered for the courses, and your great comments, it's a wonderful feeling to hear people excited about something you working on. So it made this difficult task to be exciting as well.

As I promised here is more updates for online shoemaking courses that I'm working on :

Who Else Wants Shoemaking Course?

Today's post is dedicated to two important announcements. First and finely two days ago my new site that I really, really like lunched, and with it my new and updated collection, which I was crafting for the last few months! As I mentioned in last posts on the marathon week and in my book, I myself work and create my collections using my technique of Freehand pattern construction, so here you go.

This kind of precision in pattern making is very hard and sometimes almost impossible to get in classic pattern making methods. All of the designs as you can see exceed the boundaries of the last, that to consider the way of constructing a pattern in normal way is very hard to calculate, believe me I tried. I'm in purpose showing you such an extreme example for shoe pattern, but you can surely use it in your own design, to shorten your process and to give yourself more freedom in your creation.


The most interesting part of this collection for me was to work with veg tan leather, for which I came up with 

3-dimensional texture. The lines of the texture descend with lines of the pattern, creating a visual effect of motion. You are more than welcome to visit my new website share and like and I would love to hear your feedback, so you can write them down below.

As I mentioned in the previous posts, I'm planning new things for this blog, so here they are. A training shoemaking courses online. I have long realized that online we can learn not only math and physics, but also shoemaking. This was proved by you and your work. 

Because it's physically impossible to dive into details of all aspects in creating the shoe in books. They are small details but it's very important to know them, to make professional, complete shoes. In the courses I plan to teach in detail all types of shoes and theirs variations of patterns from the drawing on the last to the finished pair, how to sew, lasts, how to last and more. Although it's online training I believe that it is very important that in the courses we can learn and discuss the process. The courses will be divided into levels for beginners, advanced and master class course. At the moment I haven't made a list of the courses yet, it's more of sharing this idea with you, So now that is what I need you to do.

If you are interested in participating this kind of on-line training, write "yes, I want shoemaking course" in the comment here on the blog, more than that, write what are your weakness and what shoemaking course you would like to participate, what you need to learn?!

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