Soul Shoes

Description

Soul Shoes were made out of my love for shoes and repurposing. As I was cleaning out my closet for spring cleaning, I found I had a lot of shoes that still fit and had nice soles but I simply found unappealing. Therefore for this hackathon, I decided to reuse the soles from some shoes I had and give them new life. I love how they ended up turning out! I learned a new skill of hand sewing and using the sewing machine, as well as what the pattern of shoe looks like. At the moment, the shoes are just decoration until I put a few more stitches in and make sure they are all good for wear! I really liked this experience because it gave me ideas on what else in my closet I could renovate! I also like the idea that what I am wearing is something no one else in the world has.

Materials

- Old pair of shoes

- Shoe glue

- Hot glue gun

- Fabric of choice

- Felt of choice

- Sewing thread/ needle

- Sewing machine

- Hole puncher

- Xacto knife

- Scissors

Steps

1) Deconstruct the old shoe with an Xacto knife and scissors. Stay as close to the edges as possible in order to preserve the pattern of the shoe.

2) Once all the pieces are off, cut felt pieces to match.

3) Do the same process with the fabric, only make sure to make the fabric pieces a little larger all the way around.

4) Line the inside of the soles of the shoe with felt. Make sure to line the top of the sole as well! Attach with shoe glue.

5) Line up the fabric and felt to where the felt is in the middle of the fabric. Use a sewing machine to sew the two pieces together.

6) Use the hole punch to create 3 holes in the fabric/ felt pieces for the shoe laces. If the hole punch does not punch all the way through, use the scissors to help. Add the metal loops from the original shoe to the holes and hot glue them in place.

7) Assemble the pieces in place and start hand sewing the fabric/ felt outer pieces into the felt AND RUBBER that makes up the sole. This part is tedious.