Just a bit of a distraction....

The style Himself likes

The Boy is rather bored lately, what with being unemployed and being at home all the time.  While this has manifested in tasty tasty noms for dinner, it also means we've been looking for projects for himself to work on.  When visiting the Tandy Leather here in town to look for materials for himself to make a kidney pouch, I found some GORGEOUS red leather that had to come home with me to make Roman shoes.

The trouble is, I don't know exactly what style it is that I want to make.  I've never made shoes before, so I want something relatively easy to create for my first endeavor.  I've been collecting images for a while, and I thought I'd put them up here to see if anyone had an opinion on which I should make.

5th century womens shoes found in Egypt

Photo by Mary Harrsch,
located in the Getty

I know I want Roman shoes, something closed toed and flat, but I can't decide between the simpler slipper style which I think would be easier for a first try, or the gorgeous cut work slippers that I've been lusting over for a while.

 If I choose the simple slipper style I'd want to figure out how to do the gold embossing found on both of these examples.

Shoes found at the Antonine Wall

The Low Ham Boot

I'm also considering doing a simple slipper style for the first pair, but doing a bit of a cut work pattern on them like the pair on the left without the ties to lace it closed.  I like the patterns and texture created by the cut work.

Sara Kerr's pattern mockup

I've found several tutorials and descriptions on how to make turn shoes, and some ideas on how to pattern shoes with a duct tape "cast" of your foot.  I'm working on getting more research together, and looking for opinions on what style to do before starting, but I do want to get started sometime in the next week and a half.  I'm daydreaming about entering a Roman outfit in the 12th night costuming competition.

I'm thinking about heading up to the Pendleton outlet before Jule next weekend to see if I can find some wool gauze to make "winter Romans"  Since most of my Roman gear was made in Texas, it's mostly made of cotton or a linen/cotton blend.  I'd like to make an outfit for that competition, but it's about a month away and I haven't made any of what I would like to enter.  On the positive side, it's Roman, so it's not that hard to make quickly.  But the wool would be more historically accurate, and it would be nice to have something that was more correct than what I'm wearing now, and it would be great to have something to wear in cooler weather that was my persona.