DIY Espadrilles
Updated: Apr 18, 2023
I can hardly contain myself, I am just soooo extrememly excited to share with you guys my very own, handmade, sewn by me shoes! First of all, I never thought I would ever make my own shoes, and secondly that they would turn out this amazing. I promise, you will all be wanting a pair!!!
So I originally got the crazy idea in my head a while back when I had seen Sophie from Ada Spragg make her pair. I was INSPIRED!!! I looked and looked to find the soles in Australia with no luck. I would need to order them from the US or UK and I put it in the "too hard basket". Then I became "instabuddies" with Kristina from Needlefruit Sewing Lounge in Brisbane. Side note: I love me some instagram... don't you?!?! I must have been sending her some secret vibes about me really wanting these soles and then like magic... she got them in and I was on it like a hawk. I purchased my first pair of PRYM soles and could hardly wait for them to arrive. The soles come in multiple sizes and when mine arrived (all cutely packaged like the best gift EVER!) they came with the template pieces for the toe and heel area as well as the printed out directions from the PRYM website.
Making them was an absolute breeze, other than me needing a 10 year old to show me how to blanket stitch, I flew through the project. Hand sewing aint my thing, but I really enjoyed this. Here are a few of my tips when making your Espadrilles.
1. Read the directions carefully. I skipped ahead and traced, cut out all my pieces with out reading the directions and then realized that I needed to add a 1cm seam allowance. Oops!!
2. Choose sturdy home dec weight fabric or use a heavy woven interfacing if using one of your favorite quilting weight cottons like I did. Mine is Leah Duncan Medow Vale by Art Gallery.
3. Keep your blanket stitches even from shoe to shoe. If you look closely at mine, one shoe's stitching is slightly smaller. I think that all comes with practice and I don't really mind the look.
4. I top stitched the toe and heel before sewing the pieces to the shoe. I feel like the extra top stitching makes it look a little more professionally made.
5. To get a snug fit I constantly checked the fitting as I was stitching around the sole. I would have it all pinned in place and some parts of the toe I folded under a little extra and repinned to give a closer fit.
6. In a lot of the online pictures I saw that they did really huge blanket stitches. This may be to give the shoe extra support but I really didn't like the look of the bigger stitching so I did mine a lot smaller. I still feel that mine fit well and only time will tell how they hold up with the smaller stitching.
7. Some tutorials show how to do a toe reinforcement to keep the fabric from giving out in the spot where your big toe rubs the top of the shoe. I choose not to do this either, but may reconsider after I see how the shoes wear. (My big toe is rather big. LOL!!)
Here is me strutting my stuff in my new Chambray Bondi Top, Handmade Necklace from Finder Maker and DIY Espadrilles. I wore these all day teaching and they were so comfortable. I made sure to make mine in a darker fabric so that they would wear a bit longer with out looking too dirty. Im fairly certain these would be easy to wash.
So there you have it. Are you inspired? Excited? I am so excited to have these to wear to Houston Quilt Market and for when I go back home to visit my family. These are going to be my summer wardrobe staple!
I would love to know if you have ever made your own shoes or what you think about mine. Comment below or send me a message.
All the Best and Happy Sewing,
Lindsey Rae
