Medieval Shoe Wear Patterns

The pictures below illustrate the wear patterns and seam failures on my second pair of shoes. Hopefully this will serve as a "guide to things not to do" when building shoes.

These are a very basic pair of 14^th century shoes, I can't remember off the top of my head which example out of Shoes and Pattens I based these on. The heel should be lower and the angle in the sides under the ankle should be deeper.

I've been wearing these at SCA events for a couple of years. Most of the wear on them has happened at a couple of camping events where they were worn for days at a time and, since I don't have any pattens right now, they got wet and didn't have a chance to dry properly.

I ended up 'finishing' these at 3am the morning of 12^th night in Caid a couple of years ago. Because they were finished in such a hurry, and on the other side of the world from most of my leatherworking gear, they lack a heel stiffener and reinforcement cords and this has resulted in premature wear and the failure of the side seams.

Pictures

Click on the thumbnails for larger pictures.

	Shoe from the front. One of the things I was quite pleased with when I built these was how well the point of the toe ended up turning.
	Top of the shoe.
	The side seam pulling apart. This actually failed completely and was redone before I wore these last and it's starting to fail again after being worn for three days. Note the lack of reinforcement cord around the vamp opening and the fact that the side seam meets at the apex of the angle between the heel part and the vamp. The side seam should actually be offset from this so that it doesn't get so stressed but I messed up the patterning.
	Failing side seam from the inside. This is pulling apart from the top, which gets stressed when I pull the shoes on and off my foot - partly because the shoes came out slightly too small.
	The heel is collapsing at the back of the shoe. This is what heel stiffeners are designed to prevent!
	Because the heel is collapsing, the upper at the base of the heel has folded under my heel as I walk and is now getting very worn.
	Shoe from the back. The floppyness of the heel is quite apparent here.
	Wear on the sole of the shoe. This isn't particularly abnormal. The sole is built in two parts with a butted seam under the arch of the foot.
	Wear on the upper on the inside of the foot. Due to an odd combination of poor fitting and the way I walk my foot is actually off the side of the sole slightly and I'm walking on the upper a little.
	The opening in the vamp. There should be a tounge which I never got around to adding. The lace is just a leather thong. It should actually be threaded from the inside of the shoe but I never seem to get around to shifting it. I'll probably build another pair of shoes first.

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