Shoes for Dale Leroy

  Okay! Here's the latest update on Dale Leroy,the felt doll I've been making,named after the son my mom always wanted. I made him some 'big yella work boots' like my dad used to wear,that Mom wanted her mythical little boy to wear.  I was going to paint his shoes on the felt feet I made on him, as I have done for the other felt covered dolls I have made. You may have seen some of those in my "A Doll of My Own Making" posts. (See the sidebar.) Then I thought, well, maybe I will make him some separate felt shoes. I found the right colour felt in my stash.
 

I thought I would just cover his feet  in yellow felt and paint on some shoe laces. Then I thought I could glue on thread or string and make faux shoe laces. Then I decided I would make his shoes like real shoes, in separate pieces, with tongues, and all that. Then I decided to even actually lace them with thread laces.
 

The white felt is for the soles.

   So these are the 'big yella work boots' Dale Leroy ended up with.

They aren't removable. Sorry Ivy. I glued them on.

His pants are pushed up so you can see his shoes. I haven't tried pulling them down over the shoes yet. They may not fit!

  

 
I even remembered at the last minute that Dad,who always replaced the laces that his 'big yella work boots'  came with right away, with leather laces,used to wrap the laces around his ankles a couple of times before tying the shoes.

The shoes took me a while, but I did do one wise thing I usually don't do. I made templates for the second shoe from the pieces of the first shoe, once I had fine tuned it. 

He kind of has Frankenstein feet now.

You can see some glue. This is why I have only made Caucasian people so far. I sort of make the felt moldable with the glue when I make the hands, especially.The glue blends into the pale felt,but would show with darker felt. Ivy had a costume she was working on at college, and had me experiment with mixing paint with the glue(Fabri-Tac). It doesn't work!

Of course, since the feet weren't exactly the same, the shoe didn't fit the other foot the way the original had fit the first foot! 

  So the one foot looks a little wider than the other one. But I have feet like that, so why can't Dale Leroy? He's my brother, after all!