The procedures of manufacturing a pair of ordinary cloth shoes

(1) Designing the shape

The first step in making a pair of comfortable shoes is to measure the foot. According to the older generation, measuring the foot of someone is impolite and treated as a symbol of inability. It even more frowned upon when a daughter-in-law makes shoes for her husband’s parents or girls make shoes for their lovers. These ideals lead to women acquiring the ability to know the size of a person’s foot with a glimpse. It is hard for the beginner to predict the exact size so they have to wait for a rainy day to secretly find a person’s footprints on a muddy road to measure the size of the footprints.

(2) Preparing the materials

When making cloth shoes, the materials can be divided into items for the vamp and the sole. They can also be divided into outside and inside fabrics through the makeup of the shoes. Aside from the cloth, the threads are also necessary. The inside fabric is always either old cloth that has not been worn out, or the leftover materials after tailoring new cloth. The shoemakers then paste multilayer fabrics into one piece of thick cloth called “Jiangcengbu”. This kind of cloth is needed for both the sole and the vamp. The “Jiangcengbu” used in one pair of shoes can be laid open on the ground for more than 10 square meters. The outside fabric is new cloth that will be used on the upper part and the sole of shoes. The threads are mainly used in the sole so they need to be as strong as No.2 steel wire. The threads used in the sole are polished with wax several times before use to ensure it can be threaded.

(3) Sewing the fabrics

Sole

Sewing the materials of cloth shoes almost always begins from the sole, perhaps the most important part in the manufacture process. Shoemakers cut out most of the sole with sole fabric based on a paper sample or a toasted asparagus cortex sample of a sole. They will then paste the soles into one until the whole sole is about 1 or 2 centimeters thick.

It’s said the sole of cloth shoes has thousands of layers, but there are actually only about five layers. The term, “sole of one thousand layers” is exaggerated to describe the sole’s many layers and the complicated manufacturing process. After pasting, a tailor will sew “the sole of one thousand layers”, which is called the “Na” sole. It should begin along the edge and be kept one centimeter away. It should use back stitches to sew and circle the sole twice while keep the line neat and tight. The knots and uncovered threads should look like a queue of ants. After sewing the edge, tailors can sew the part into a loop. There are many stitches included in the process such as parallel stitching and herringbone stitching. Only after observation or with the guidance of a teacher can beginners work it out.

Vamp

The manufacture of the vamp can be divided based on the height of the upper portion of the shoes. High cut shoes should be sewed while the front and back of the shoes are not sewn to make it convenient to operate during the process of sewing other parts. Modern shoes are mainly low cut shoes. The vamps of low cut shoes are U-shaped before the heel parts are sewn, making the front part wide and the two sides narrow. The whole vamp is symmetrical.