I was a cobbler for a week and I am chuffed with the boots I made

What if these boots are rubbish? What if I hate them? What if they turn out so bad I never wear them and feel sick every time I look at them?

Almost a thousand dollars and week of leave from my job as a newspaper designer is a big investment in a pair of shoes. I'll be designing and making them from scratch too, and I'm nervous as I prepare to start my week at Shoe School, the tiny temple of leather run by Louise Clifton in Newtown, Wellington. 

The quest to make the perfect shoes has consumed me ever since I noticed Lou's small and perfectly-formed studio had landed in the neighbourhood, and was lucky enough to get the five-day full-time shoe making workshop as a birthday gift from my wife and family. 

Before the course began, I'd been emailing my big ideas back and forth with Lou for several weeks and had settled on a plan. Leather boots. I wanted the boots to be unique and truly mine (how often do you get to really customise something?), but not such a statement that I wouldn't want to wear them every day. I'd already eyed up a roll of lush inky Italian leather in the corner of the school for my blue/black boot vision. 

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And so, on a cold Wednesday in August, my time as a cobbler began.

Lou had prepared mock-up shoes for all the students (maximum of four per workshop), based on our design chats and measurements, and we quickly took to them with a Sharpie pen. Then it began; editing, chopping and changing the pattern until it was where we wanted it.

By the end of the first day, about 25 pieces of leather upper, lining, counter, vamp and half a dozen other bits with technical terms I am quickly learning, are arranged carefully on the studio bench, lending itself beautifully to an artful tableau. After all, if it's not on Instagram, it didn't happen. Scissors down, job done, hashtags shared.
 

Despite my perfectionist night terrors of wonky stitches and compromised leather, day two dawned and I was let loose on the deeply intimidating sewing machines to try and make my jigsaw puzzle look a bit more shoe-like. It's at least as stressful as my dreams, but mercifully, not that difficult at all, and Lou and her amazing assistants Gemma and Rowena are very patient.  Flashbacks to my grandparent's furnishing studio, and mum's mandatory sewing lessons crop up all day as the yet soleless shoe begins to take shape. It's thrilling and extremely satisfying work.

Showing photos of my day's work to the kids is becoming a nightly pastime and they are my biggest cheerleaders. Their praise is effusive, though it does ring a little false (the shoes still look like hats). Normally this exchange is the other way around, but I hope their patience will be rewarded.

Making and affixing the delicate piping and punching and setting eyelets for shoe laces are joyous highlights of day three, and I've gone mad with the monogram stamping (if not now, then when?). These details are things I'd never given much thought to before this week. I am so relaxed right now. Passwords, deadlines and rosters are all forgotten, and I am beginning to feel like post-apocalyptic life might not be so bad after all now that I am gaining an actual real-world skill.  It's hard to see many people queuing around the block for my print design skills when the sky has fallen, but this... this could be a valuable skill.
 

Day four is all about the lasting, where the floppy stitched and glued leather elements are stretched and formed over the shoe "last", or wooden foot form.  I have been obsessive over the shape of my foot, and Lou has been out to the belt sander multiple times with the last, paring back width as well as building up the profile on the toe cap for me, until I am certain it's where I want it. Shoe fans know shape is everything, and Lou is extremely committed to this stage. I'm working with a classic dress Derby boot last, which I'll juxtapose with some more sneaker-like design elements in the full scheme, but there is no way I can do the next bit alone. 

The repetitive stretching and tacking is an easy enough task, but nailing it is one of those elements that simply cannot be taught in five days. I can see the years of shoe-lasting in Lou's eyes as she scans my efforts again and again, seeing angles, flaws, torsion and stretch where I cannot. The folds of neatly pleated indigo leather, pulled taut and away from the "feather edge" of the sole are a thing of beauty.

Lunchtime becomes crunchtime, and we've made a decision that one non-structural aspect just isn't working, and so the back end of the day is spent back at the drawing board, redrafting a portion of pattern, recutting and stitching the leather to resolve the headache. It grinds my gears going backwards and I'm frustrated that I haven't been able to master a centuries-old artisan's craft in my first attempt but this will save my boot, and is worth doing. Ah, the design process.

The day ends, and I don't know why I am feeling so frustrated and anxious. She wouldn't let me go home with only one shoe finished right?

We make up the ground quickly on Sunday morning and now my attention turns to locking in how I imagine the sole, white or black? It's something I have been discussing with everyone I come across, and I can't delay much longer. I go on a coffee run and when I come back, it's settled in my mind.  The "rand", or stitched strip that runs around the top of the sole will be black, the sole proper will be white. At this stage the shoes have been lasted and tacked, glued down to the insole board, beaten senseless with a leather hammer, and the excess pleated leather has been cut or sanded away.

Applying rand is like icing a weird cake, and deeply satisfying.  I am paranoid about either using too much glue and making an unsightly sticky mess or, alternatively, not using enough glue and having the shoe fall apart when I take my first steps. The pitch of my footfall is calculated, and the sole is built by glue-sandwiching successive layers of EVA foam, and finally a bottom sole of rubber crepe.  All that remains is to trim and sand before finally and gingerly removing each boot from the wooden last encased inside it. It's try-on time...   

Flash forward to three weeks later and the smile still hasn't left my mug. Can I tell you about the fit? It's perfect, there is nothing more bespoke than a day-old shoe that you made with your own hands.  You can't even get them in the shops that fresh, for any money.  I'm wearing them right now, as I have done every day bar two since the glue cured. I've perfected my ability to segue every conversation around to my shoes, but am still working on the perfect "oh these? I made them actually" riposte. 

The stakes were high but becoming a cobbler for the week at Shoe School was worth it. I'm chuffed.

*See Caleb's Shoe School Instagram story highlights: @dadmanners