making tartan shoes

**Tobus** · 8th October 12, 05:51 AM

Friday's advice is solid. I'm actually doing something similar right now... not with shoes, but with gluing tartan fabric to leather to act as a liner for the inside of a sporran I'm building. The trick is to make sure that the fabric stays glued solidly to the base material while still being flexible. I'm using Barge Cement, which is a very good product for this. But I'll warn you, any cement you use needs to be applied carefully. Most cements of this nature need to sit long enough to get 'tacky' before you press the items together. Especially when using tartan fabric. If you put the tartan fabric on the cement while it's still liquid, it will soak right through the fabric and leave you with a darkened blob showing through. And when it hardens, it will turn yellowish. So it's very important to make sure that the cement is in the perfect state when the fabric is applied. And I'm thinking this would be very difficult on a complex shape like a shoe.

The other problematic issue is trimming the fabric and avoiding fraying at the edges. On my sporran project, I am able to lay my flat pieces of leather on the table to cement the tartan fabric, then I trim the fabric carefully around the leather with scissors and apply Edge Kote to both the leather and the fabric to help reduce fraying. But on a shoe where you'd have to trim the fabric with an Xacto knife or some other awkward tool around the sole, you'll undoubtedly have fraying issues. I honestly don't have any advice on how to trim it and seal the edge of the fabric that will look nice.

**Friday** · 8th October 12, 07:28 AM

Originally Posted by Tobus

But on a shoe where you'd have to trim the fabric with an Xacto knife or some other awkward tool around the sole, you'll undoubtedly have fraying issues. I honestly don't have any advice on how to trim it and seal the edge of the fabric that will look nice.

Thought of the day.
- Take masking tape and cover the shoe.
- Trim the tape to make a pattern, split the pattern along the back seam.
- Use the pattern to cut out a piece of tartan fabric.

The edge of the fabric could be fray checked by sewing a very thin piece of bind tape to the edges, ribbon folded in half might work for the binding tape. I may also be possible to simply stitch around the edge of the fabric to delay fraying until the glue has set.

**plaid preacher** · 16th October 12, 12:40 PM

Have you check with a good shoemaker? It seems to me that a flat would be equally made and that might have a good idea about how to do it in tartan. It might cost a little but you would have a lovely finished product that wouldn't fray and you could wear again if you choose.

**Tobus** · 16th October 12, 01:44 PM

Speaking of custom shoes, I totally forgot about something I saw on the show "Shark Tank". There's a company called The Ave Venice that will do custom printed canvas shoes. They take a pair of plain Vans or Converse sneakers, put it in a machine, and it prints any image on the shoes. They don't offer ballet slippers, but it might be worth talking to them and seeing if they could work that in, if you could find a pair of plain slippers that would take the printing like canvas does. Worst case, the Vans slip-on shoes might be able to be gussied up after printing with a tartan image to make-do. Just a thought.