Shoe Making – 5 Day Welting Short Course

On this five day intensive course you will learn two of the most important elements of hand sewn shoe making, hand lasting and hand welting. It gives you the skills to get a pair of shoes to this stage and for them to then be finished by a skilled cobbler.

COURSE CONTENT

You will start by hand lasting your uppers. This is the stage of pulling the leather shoe upper over the last (the forms that the shoes are made on), where it is secured in place with nails. It is one of the most important because a hand lasted shoe has a beautiful shape, exactly following the contours of the last.

Then you will stitch a welt all of the way around your shoes. The welt is a strip of leather that is stitched by hand around the edge of the shoe through the upper and footbed. This is the foundation for attaching the sole and heel.

You will work with specialist shoe making tools – a shoe making knife (your best friend or worst enemy depending on how sharp it is), lasting pliers, nippers, a leather hammer and a sewing awl and mitt.

Once you have finished welting, your shoes will be sent off to our specialist cobbler to have the leather sole and heel attached before being carefully boxed up and delivered back to you ready to be worn!

GROUP SIZE

Up to 4 students, so there is plenty of one-to-one guidance and instruction

TIME

The course runs for some 35 hours teaching time which can be taken as one block 10am – 5pm; Monday to Friday during evening classes or by arrangement. Please allow six weeks lead time.

LOCATION

Studio 1.20, Oxo Tower Wharf, London SE1 9PH (Nearest London underground and National Rail stations: Waterloo, Waterloo East, Embankment, Blackfriars Bridge and Southwark)

MATERIALS

All of the materials to make the shoes are provided, but we do need some important information from you at checkout. We need to know:

COLOUR: What leather colour(s) you’d like. We offer a core range including black, dark brown, mid brown, tan, burgundy, navy and white

or alternative colours are available at +£30 per colour.

STYLE: Which style you’d like to make – a Derby shoe, Oxford shoe, Wholecut shoe or Derby boot .

Plain Derby shoes with metal eyelets

Derby boot with toecap

NEXT STEPS

Please book the course and then email us or call 07401 148763 to arrange to come in to try on a pair of shoes for size, to choose your leather and your detailing and to arrange a start date.

If you can’t come in person, then please send us your UK shoe size along with outline drawings of your feet.

How to draw around your feet

Ask a friend to help. Stand in the socks you will wear with your shoes. Stand on a firm surface with your weight evenly distributed . Ask your friend to hold an HB pencil vertically against your foot and to draw around first the left and then the right foot. Then ask them to draw around the heel again, angling the pencil, to draw a line where the heel touches the paper.  Ask them to draw a second line on the inside of each foo at the waist (between the heel and your big toe joint); angling the pencil against the foot at 45 degrees. If you opt for a boot, please also send the circumference of your ankle measured at 6″ from the floor (standing in socks on a flat surface).