Here is Part 2 of my tutorial for 1790s painted shoes! At the end of Part 1, I had just discovered that the Angelus Satin Leather finisher had turned my 18th century shoes into patent plastic disco balls. At this point I shoved them into a cupboard and went out to find the matte version of the leather finisher. This presented a certain difficulty. There are a lot of companies that don’t ship to Chile, and unfortunately, Angelus is one of them. Eventually I found a seller on Mercado Libre who had a crate of it, and for an absolutely extortionary price, I paid to have one bottle shipped from Santiago to Iquique. It was a period of impatient waiting – the shoes were lighting up the inside of my closet.
![Two pairs of bright yellow painted shoes - top, 1790s slippers, bottom 1760s American Duchess Kensingtons. The paint is very shiny and they glow like disco balls under a spotlight.](https://www.sewwhathappens.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/IMG_5049.jpg)
The day the matte finisher arrived, I wiped the shoes carefully for dust bunnies, applied a layer of matte glaze and put them under a tipped over tupperware crate to dry. And then I did it two more times.
The glaze was dimmed – not shut down, but dimmed. The shoes were still bright and shiny, but it was the shiny that a really diligent shoe polisher could get with wax and elbow grease- not a modern space age plastic shine.
Step 6: Trimming the Shoes
I trimmed my yellow 1790s shoes with pink petersham ribbon. I had two widths of it – 5/8″ inches to be doubled over around the shoe opening and 3/8″ inches to mark the center back and side seams. The ribbon was glued on with Fabri-tac glue.
If you haven’t used it before, you need to know straight up – Fabri-tac is the devil. It sets almost instantaneously, but it comes out in gobs so it needs to be spread, and that is an awful combination of qualities. I found the best method to be running a bead of glue along my glue-line, then spreading it out with a finger or a palette knife, then running over it a second time to remove any remaining globs that could soak through the ribbon, and THEN pressing the fabric onto the glue line.
![two painted 1790s shoes, seen from behind, with pink petersham being glued up the center of the back.](https://www.sewwhathappens.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/IMG_7149.jpg)
Beginning with the short back and side seams, I turned the raw edge of the 3/8″ ribbon under, tacked it in place with a dab of glue, and then glued the strip in place, folding the top edge over the lip of the shoe and holding that down with a large glob.
Next I bound the open edge with the 5/8″ ribbon. Working in short sections, I glued the ribbon to the inside of the lip. Once it was in place, and working again in sections, I folded the ribbon over to the outside and glued it down, again working in small sections, and pressing it down with sewing clips.
![A bright yellow painted 1790s shoe with soft pink petersham ribbon being glued around the foot opening. The ribbon is held in place by a dozen red quilting clips](https://www.sewwhathappens.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/IMG_7164.jpg)
I had some difficulty with the ribbon around the heel. The suede panel on the heel became very stiff when painted, and I wasn’t able to flatten out the curve enough to successfully lay the ribbon from the inside. It turned out to be easiest to run a second piece over the back of the heel, working outside-in. This extra piece is not symmetrical on one shoe – when i was gluing it down, the glue spread out from under the top layer and stained the bottom piece, so i had to rip the patch off and start again with a longer one to cover the stain!
![A pair of bright yellow painted 1790s shoes with soft pink petersham ribbon being glued around the foot openings](https://www.sewwhathappens.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/IMG_7166.jpg)
But voila – there they were. My fingers were a mess of glue blobs and ribbon shards, but the shoes were a POEM in pink and yellow, ready for field tests.
![A pair of painted 1790s shoes sitting on a pale beige cushion - the shoes are a bright sunny yellow and bound with soft pink petersham ribbon.](https://www.sewwhathappens.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/IMG_7191.jpg)
Or almost – I wanted pompoms on the toes. I largely followed Frolicking Frocks’ tutorial for this. I made four pompoms out of silk embroidery floss, tied them off in the center, and layered them on a pair of shoe clip blanks: two pompoms per blank, stacked cross-ways. Once they were stitched tight, I cut the loops and trimmed the shaggy edges.
![A pair of pompoms made of silk floss, one face up, one face down](https://www.sewwhathappens.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/IMG_8636.jpg)
In my button box I found a pair of small mother of pearl shank buttons, so I stitched them onto the centers of the pom poms.
![A close-up of a bright yellow 1790s shoe with a pink pom-pom on the toe. The pom-pom is centered with a white mother of pearl shank button](https://www.sewwhathappens.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/IMG_8640.jpg)
And – Voila! This concludes Part 2 of my tutorial for 1790s painted shoes! These lovely little shoes have gone from cotton-candy sweet to bleeding ADORABLE.
![A pair of painted 1790s shoes sitting on a pale beige cushion. The shoes are a bright sunny, shiny yellow and bound in soft pink petersham ribbon. They have pink pompoms on the toes, each centered with a small white mother of pearl shank button.](https://www.sewwhathappens.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/IMG_8860.jpg)