Today I was a guest on a Dandelion Branding Sustainability Podcast – my first time being interviewed! It was a pleasure to have the opportunity to share what I have learned about ecological problems with the footwear industry, and about the alternatives that I offer, on a very modest scale. The podcast will be available …

I love the durability of leather ornaments – they could be passed down for generations. These trees are designed to be made with household tools, if you don’t have stamping tools – you will need a wide chisel, a standard screw driver, and  small phillips screwdriver. They can be hung on a tree or hung …

  This Scandinavian bird ornament is simple to make if you have 2-3-ounce vegetable-tanned scrap lying around. If not, you can order a belly-leather strip (varies from maybe 8″ wide to 12″, and is about 4′ long) from https://wickett-craig.com that had been skived to 2-ounces. You can make a lot of birds from one strip, …

Stephanie from France made these “moccashoes” for her daughter – with an exuberant heel cover,  center seam vamp and a little flower, they are exquisite, in my opinion! Can you imagine how you would make a pair for a child – colors, style, embellishments – all of these choices result in your unique creation. It …

Use patterns from Mystical Stitches by Christi Johnson to increase the uniqueness and charm of your items, as I did here with the same design on two projects. One is a string backpack and the other is a pair of First Footsteps toddler shoes. To embroider the moons, I used a drill press from Harbor …

A friend forwarded a local “craig’s list” listing to me recently – “a luxury handbag maker is retiring and is selling all his leather” – I thought “oh, no, I have so much leather already, I shouldn’t even go and be tempted–but I did go and was tempted BIG TIME. A lot of it was …

I have recently learned the advantages of making slits for stitching instead of holes! First of all, holes can be visible when the shoes are complete, whereas slits are almost invisible. But the major advantage is the ease of making slits, especially when using this “nipper.” Of course you can also make slits with a …

A small group of shoemakers have been meeting twice monthly for a few months, to share our shoemaking journey and to share tips, at 6:00 Eastern Time. Since that time is 11:00p.m. in Europe, we had a 3:00 ET gathering last week. One of the women was from Poland and said that she had not …

I put a short video on my instagram feed – simple shoemaking – on how to make a leather pin cushion from scrap leather. I had the good fortune of receiving a boxful of colorful leather samples, and used two of them to make the pin cushion. I think sand is the best filler for …

Leather has always been sustainable fashion’s big debate. In recent years, more and more people have been shifting to “vegan leather” in an effort to be more sustainable. But does vegan mean better? Can conventional leather ever be sustainable? What if it’s secondhand? And what better alternatives are out there? In its current state, the …