I went with Black Pearl for the pants, and I'm glad I did, I love the way they turned out. But more on that after I finish my first belt and take a progress picture. For now, I really wanted to post the first part of my boot progress. I'm sorry there aren't very many pictures, there were some places I definitely could have taken more, but I was kind of into it. If you are planning on copying my method and want to see something that I mentioned but didn't have enough pictures of, just let me know and I'll try to get some when I do the other boot. Also, the flash kills the color of the suede, but it looks to me like the same mustardy yellow leather used on the CABoots.
I started with a pair of western/motorcycle type boots from HH. I had to cut off the boot straps and remove the bound edge and zipper from the shaft.
Then I sanded one of them down so the glue would do it's job.
That was the easy part, then it got a lot harder. I did all of this sort of on the fly, so it wasn't perfect, but I'm making it work now in the later stages. I cut out most of the shaft, leaving only the back and front to work with. I Put the boot on, then pulled my foot half way out. When my foot was stretching the ankle open the farthest it had to for me to still be able to get my foot in and out, but not make it loose, I measured around the outside and got about 15.5 inches. I then made a pattern for the shaft liner with that measurement as the bottom, my calf measurement as the top, and a height of 11 inches so it would almost reach my knee. I had to make the sewn edges a curve to allow my calves to fit inside the boot, then I used a leather sewing awl to stitch the two sides together. I used leather weld to glue down the seam allowances on the bad side of the leather (outside in this next shot) and then glued and stitched the liner piece to the top of the existing shaft front and back. The lines drawn on the boot are rough approximations of where the outside shaft piece will go down to (jagged line) and where the piece on the foot would go to (smooth line).
So then I made up a pattern for the boot shaft, which took a good deal of time and will probably be the hardest part of the whole project. I cut that out of the leather and sewed up the back seam, glued down the seam allowances on the inside this time, and then bit by bit starting at the heel glued down the bottom edge to the boot, leaving about a half inch from the heel/sole so that I could glue the edges in more precisely once it was together. Then I worked my way up. In retrospect, this was a pain in the a** and I might start a little higher next time, work my way down, and then back up from the starting point. I used a mixture of leather weld and barge rubber cement for this step. I have a lot of faith in leather weld, but barge came so highly recommended I figured it would probably be in my best interest to use it. Some places though, I just couldn't get to to apply the stuff on both sides and let it sit for 15 minutes. That's where the leather weld was really useful. The stuff looks and works pretty much exaclty like elmer's glue, but it works really well on leather. So I glued in the whole of the original boot shaft and then went back down, glued the edges down to the sole, used a bone folder to tuck them in nicely, and then trimmed with an xacto knife.
I'm currently in the middle of gluing the bottom edge of the shaft liner piece to the shaft all the way around, then I'll use barge to glue the seam allowances of the back seams together all the way up the boot. Then I'll glue the top edges together, and the shaft will be done.
