Well now that school isn't sucking the soul out of me, I can share how I tackled Cassandra's crazy thigh high boots! Here we go!
- Reference-
As always, we start with reference! I used the trusty 3D model with XNALara. Took some nice screenshots of every angle of the shoes. This was important because the regular art is not always consistent. Some things I knew I was going to change, I wanted high-heels (I'm really short). Not pictured here is there is no seamline down the front center of the boot. Also, since I have some thunder thighs, I knew that no store bought thigh high boots would fit me.
- Boot covers? -
First thing I wanted to try was to make removable boot covers. I covered my favorite booties with saran wrap and painters tape. The goal was to make a "boot" part and a thigh part. Well...this is how the boot part turned out.
So there was a problem with the fabric I chose...it was only 2-way stretch. Meaning I had to try to put darts in the front toe. Well I really didn't like how it looked. So I decided to go a different direction and buy some white booties from Forever 21.
So these were about the right heel height that I wanted. Now I decided to just make the "thigh" sleeve and glue it to the top of the shoe, being careful to leave enough room to work the zipper.
I don't have any pictures of this process so I'll try to explain best I can. For the thigh sleeve, I rolled out my stretch pleather fabric on the ground and loosely traced the sides of my legs making sure the stretch grain was going around my leg and not down my leg. I sewed the two parts of my leg tube together. At this point, I pinched extra areas of fabric to get a better fit on my leg. At this point I still haven't attached my new fabric tube to the shoes, I still needed to make the fold-over part at the top of the boot.
I made the top portion by making a paper pattern out of cardstock. Then I transferred it to both my white and blue fabric. The blue fabric is the same that is used on the bodice. I had to practice several times before I was able to sew it correctly. I first sewed the white trim part to the blue before sewing the other white side and flipping inside out. I then serged the bottom together, then attached it to the top of my thigh tube. After this was attached then I could attach it to the boot. I used Barge to attach it to the top of the boot (keeping the zipper free).
Now the shoes are ready for paint for the emblem on the front of the boot.
- Shoe Design -
So for the shoes, there's this delicate design on the shoes that I knew I didn't have the hand stableness to do it free-hand. So I used my new Cricut Maker to cut out a stencil out of some vinyl I had. I drew the design in Inkscape and imported it into the Cricut software. I chose to use Angelus gold paint with a gloss clear coat. It took about 3 to 4 coats to get an even gold color.
At the top of the boot it looks like there's a belt around the top, under the blue flap. So I just sewed some brown stretch vinyl over some elastic and it worked perfectly. Decided to make them permenant, so put on the boots and glued the strap to top (covering the connecting seam) using E6000. The world will end before that thing comes loose.
The last thing to make was the little gold piece on the top of the thigh. I made it out of apoxy sculpt again. Waited for it to cure completely and painted it with some standard gold spray paint. I attached them using some Gutterman's fabric glue.
I tried to sew the boots to some dance tights but it didn't work out. So instead I have the boots being held up by toupee tape instead.
- Final Thoughts -
This part really infuriated me. Sometimes you got to make something multiple times and that was definitely can be demoralizing. Granted, pretty pleased with how the ended up coming out and the boots are really comfortable.
Last up is the bodice!
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