We have been invited to a Burns night on the 25th of Jan. It is billed as a black-tie affair and Emily is getting all excited about getting dressed up. She was particularly keen to buy some Tartan accessories to tart-up an old dress, rather than invest in anything new. She specifically wanted a pair of Tartan shoes. As these shoes will only be worn once, we would normally head off to the high street and buy a pair for £20-£30. However, now that we are committed to buying British, unconsidered buying seems to be no longer possible. Try finding a pair of British made womens’ shoes on the high street, never mind finding them for under £50. British made clothing is expensive. The expense of such items is going to effect the way that we begin to think about the clothes we wear.
Anyway, in order to get around the expense of buying British in this instance Emily decided to upcycle an existing pair of shoes.
She started with an old red pair of shoes and cut rectangles of tartan to completely fit over. Then with a mix of super tacky fabric glue and a small amount of water, painted all over the surface of the shoe and fix the fabric tightly across the shoe surface.
Then the shoes were left to dry by the fire for 10 minutes or so to make sure the glue was hardened. After that the very careful cutting process began using a pair of nail scissors. Around the edges of the shoes where the upper met the sole the sharp point of the scissors was very handy to squeeze the fabric (and quite a bit of glue) into the gap giving a pretty neat finish.
Lastly she cut out the hole for the foot to go into and then trimmed the gap between fabric and old shoe with red ribbon to give it a decent finish. The shoes were finished off with a red ribbon bow to get around the problem of getting the ribbon around the corner.
All finished
My preparations are a lot easier. I have simply dusted off the old DJ and made sure it still fits (it has been about 3 years since it was last worn). Thankfully it does, despite an indulgent Christmas.
– James
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