Teeny Tiny Leather Shoes. Perfect for Little Dolls or Knitted Creatures.

I made teeny leather shoes for no other reason but that they would be cute! Tiny things appeal to me so knew I had to give this a go. These would be perfect for a doll or a knitted creature as you could make them whichever size you required.

Thin leather, cotton thread, needle, tissue paper, water, tiny button, glue, sellotape, paper, pen, scissors.

To start I needed a pattern. I started by making a paper shoe that was around the size of a baby's first shoe. I cut out a few different shapes and fitted them together with sellotape and refined the fit. From this I scaled down the pattern to the size of shoe I wanted. This took a few attempts to get a pattern I was pleased with.

Once my pattern was ready I drew out the smaller pattern onto paper, cut it out and drew around the pattern pieces onto the back of the leather and in turn cut those out. The first ones I made I just made one shoe, but then moved on to making pairs. You may notice the only thing that defines the left or right shoe is the button placement.

At first I used Gutterman sew all thread but I wanted some thread a little thicker than that and remembered I had some coats cotton thread that had been my mums. I like to incorporate things that used to belong to my parents in my crafting, I am very sentimental.

I sewed the the two ends at the back of the upper together first. This only took two stitches. Once they were joined I sewed the upper to the inner sole.

On the first few I made I just sewed around each shoe guessing where each stitch should go. But further along I used a needle to punch a hole ready for sewing.

The shoes were just a flat bit of leather and did not look appealing at all. To shape the leather after I had sewed the upper to the inner sole I thoroughly wetted the leather, took some wet tissues and packed out each shoe into the final shape I wanted. I then let it dry for 24 hours. Once the leather and tissue were completely dry I removed the tissue and they held the shape I wanted.

Adding the strap is very straightforward I pierced two holes on either side of the shoe in the place where the strap would go, then just used a whip stitch to stitch it in place. On the side where the button is I added the button and the strap in one go. On the first ones I used some tiny buttons I had in my stash, on later versions I cut round buttons from scrap leather and much preferred these ones.

For the outer sole I cut another piece the same as the inner sole and glued it on using some craft glue that was suitable for textiles and leather. I already had it in my craft room and wasn't sure it was going to be strong enough but thought it was worth a try. It worked perfectly! On another pair I added a layer of thin black foam that was packaging in a parcel I had received to make the sole slightly thicker, I added this between the inner and outer sole.

Once the glue had dried I used some sharp scissors to trim around the shoe to make sure all layers were level.

Once I had my finished shoes I thought it would be cute to have some shoe boxes. I found a tutorial online on how to make a mini gift box. I adapted the tutorial to what was needed and made some boxes using nice craft paper.

Once you have shoe boxes you need labels right? So I made some labels to indicate what was inside. These were generic, not using different colour numbers etc. Frutejuce is the name of my etsy shop so I chose that name for the labels. I used Affinity Publisher to make and layout of the labels, they were just paper so I used PVA glue to glue them onto the box.

I wrapped the shoes in some tissue paper, much as they would be when you buy new shoes. But instead of tissue paper I used some old sewing patterns cut to size.

The shoes are now displayed on my dusty shelf of joy!