Procrastination through ... shoes?

I ended up procrastinating and neglecting my hat-making a while this summer/fall. And the reason was because I was in the ensemble of Sweeney Todd at Stowe Theatre Guild. The director changed the time period of the show to be 1745. Our Mrs. Lovett — an actor after my own detail-obsessed heart — had period appropriate shoes that she had gotten while studying in England. The rest of the girls were stuck wearing character shoes, jazz shoes or Victorian-style boots. *shudder*

That wouldn't do for my obsession with historical accuracy, so I decided to ... make my own shoes. In classic "me" fashion, I undertook a sizable project when no one would have cared or thought less of me for just wearing character shoes. And I'd never done anything with shoes before, but I didn't let that dissuade me. What I did was take a pair of character shoes and modded them to look more period appropriate by sewing up brocade fabric in the proper shapes and gluing the fabric to the character shoes. (I don't use a glue gun in my millinery work. I promise!)

Here is the result:

The image quality isn't the best (being taken in dim backstage conditions), and the neon backstage tape doesn't exactly add to the period mood. But I'm pretty proud of my work. My castmates were jealous and some people did notice (mostly fellow costume geeks).