Give me a sizable scrap of oil-tanned leather, and I will make:
1 pair of bog shoes 1 pair of 3-piece mittens 1 basic slit-belt, a scaled-down Birka wallet 70 feet of leather lacing 10 short ties, a new (more HA) needle book case 2 custom thimbles, a toy ball (with all of the scrap for stuffing) 4 cup cover corner weights 17 tarp/tent grommets & 7 (25 each) rune sets
About a year ago, a friend gave me a “scrap” of oil-tanned leather, with encouragement for me to try making some simple shoes like he’d made for his lovely wife. I was doubtful at first if there was enough leather there to make a pair of shoes with, and so found a tutorial online and drafted a pattern in paper before testing it on less nice leather I had in stash. This style of shoes has many names, including bog shoes, Roman shoes, Iron Age shoes, medieval moccasins, Ghillies, and more. Shoes of this style have been in use for thousands of years, and still are today in Irish dancing and other niches.
Having reassured myself that the amount of leather needed was far smaller than I’d feared, and with a pattern to lay out and figure out how to get the most of the nicer leather I’d been gifted, I felt comfortable plowing ahead. I did end up slightly tweaking the design of the shoes after testing and wearing the first pair. I made the heel about half an inch taller, sorted out a better, cleaner plan for how to stitch the heels up, and shifted the taps for the over-the-foot lacing forward a bit to fix some of the gapping I experienced with the first pair. In the pictures above, the improved pattern in on the right, and on top on the other to compare.
When I went to cut out the leather, I already had a vague idea of the other pieces I wanted to try to get out of the material if I could, and carefully rearranged the pattern pieces for the largest objects several times, lightly tracing with a bone awl, until I found the most efficient layout.
Simply tracing with the bone awl worked so well (while still being easily and completely erasable with just a little rubbing of the surface) that I used it for the final tracing as well. I made sure to flip over the shoe and mitten patterns to get one right and one left of each. I chose to cut one shoe piece out of the dead center of the leather with the intention of leaving an oblong donut shape which I could then spiral cut into one very long continuous piece of leather lacing, which ended up working even better than I’d hoped for. I’m sure I’ll find use for 70’ of lacing over the coming years! About 10 got used for lacing up the shoes. I then cut out the eight biggest pieces with a pair of scissors. It would have been more historically accurate to do so with a knife, but I am far less skilled and comfortable with that tool. Still at the big-shapes stage, I also found ways to get a simple slit belt and the shorter lacing points out of it without cutting into any of the pieces I could use for the other intended items.
This left me with enough scrap to pursue my second-tier priority projects. I did have to scale down my attempt at a Birka wallet and adjust the proportions a little to squeak out the pieces I needed, but given that I already know I was not going to be getting anywhere close to an exact replica because my material is so much thicker and the construction process changes I would need to make because of that, I didn’t sweat it. After that, I found space for a needle book case, a baseball-style toy ball, and all 16 (plus a spare!) tarp-tent grommets I’d really hoped to get out of the material. By that point, I was seriously down to scraps. Me being me, I love zero-waste crafting, and so did some brainstorming to come up with custom-fit thumb and forefinger thimbles and cup-cover corner weights for the biggest pieces left. Then I went through and cut out as many uniform disks as I could for rune sets. What was left by that point was truly unusable for anything other that stuffing, which it ended up being (the perfect amount, even) for the toy ball.
With everything cut out, I started sewing the shoes. To prepare, I cut out the toe tabs and then want back and rounded them off, again with scissors. I then used a needle-nose modern awl and pliers to start the lacing holes in all the tabs, and a bone all to widen them sufficiently. I could have used a leather hole punch for this, but that felt too modern. I then did roughly the same thing for the stitching holes along the heel. I marked out my desired spacing by scratching lines, which I later easily rubbed out once the holes her punched. I only used the smaller awl for these, since they are being sewn with thread, not lacing with strips of leather.
To do that sewing, I used a thick natural linen sewing thread, waxed with beeswax, and a bone needle. You can see the steps I took to sew up the heel in the pictures below. It was definitely overkill and not ideally historically plausible or accurate to stitch them that heavily, geometrically, and so it looked that clean in the inside, but that’s just my personality lol. I also then chose to stitch over the edges on the inside where the first round of stitching didn’t do so already, gong through the same holes.
Just like that, I had perfectly fitting bog shoes!
The next thing I played with was the needle book. Rather than using cut fabric for the internal pages, I decided to felt my own. Just on a whim. It came out very soft, and was fun to make. I did so by sticking some mystery wool (gut instinct says rabbit fiber?) I didn’t want to ever spin (too short of a staple) into a ziplock bag with some warm water and a little soap, and agitating it for about an hour, rinsing it, and letting it dry flat overnight. The actual construction of the book was very simple, and I now use it for all my historical bone and brass needles and pins. The felt came out a little long, so I folded it over into a thread remnant pocket, which I ended up really liking. (Of course a kitty had to help with the photoshoot…)
For the mittens, which I have no historical basis for, just practical needs, I found it helpful to use a pin to hold the pieces aligned while sewing the pieces together. For both it and the toy ball I used what’s modernly called a baseball stitch.
When I was nearly done stitching the ball closed, I stuffed in the very last of the scraps from the original piece of leather, which turned out to be exactly the right amount which made me very happy! I also really like how the darker and creased edges of the original piece of leather add interest to both the mittens and toy ball.
I didn’t take pictures of the scaled-down Birka wallet in progress, since I knew going in it’s a poor replica of the historical original. In order to stitch through up to 5 layers of this leather, I had to open all the stitching holes with an awl before I could get a needle through. I used a proper saddle stitch for this one. (More help from the other kitty!)
I failed to take progress or close-up pictures of the thimbles or tarp grommets, the latter of which I haven’t yet put to use. Here is the cup cover and leather lacing.
Last up were the rune sets. Again, no historical precedent, but makes me happy! I did my best to sort them into shade-matching sets, making sure than none with creases or marks would be left blank. I then used a wood burning pen (in the basement, because holy branding stink, Batman!) to mark the Elder Futhark alphabet onto each set, leaving an additional one blank, which is my preference for esoteric use of rune sets.
That’s it for this “scrap” of leather!
Next Time: -I want to try using a small reproduction knife for cutting out all of the pieces, to make it just that much more historically accurate. -I want to make another pair of these bog shoes out of a slightly thicker leather, but otherwise the same as I’m happy with the fit and appearance. -If I can get my hands on some sinew, I’d like to try using that instead of the linen thread for sewing those shoes. -I want to try making a 1:1 scale Birka wallet out of some much thinner leather. -I want to make another needle book with a fold over and wrap strap closure, and with thicker felted internal pages. -And I want to try making some completely different items, such as true Viking-era turn shoes.
All in all, I feel this was a great learning experience, and certainly bolstered my confidence working with the medium!
Sources: (Really just for the shoes) DeRushie, Nicole, Bog Fashion: Recreating Bronze and Iron Age Clothes. ChronoCopia Publishing, 2026. Rabeiga, Kamil, Viking Dress Code: Textile and Leather Clothing in Scandinavia. Triglav, 2019. Ewing, Thor, Viking Clothing. The History Press, 2009.
Give me a sizable scrap of oil-tanned leather, and I will make:
1 pair of bog shoes 1 pair of 3-piece mittens 1 basic slit-belt, a scaled-down Birka wallet 70 feet of leather lacing 10 short ties, a new (more HA) needle book case 2 custom thimbles, a toy ball (with all of the scrap for stuffing) 4 cup cover corner weights 17 tarp/tent grommets & 7 (25 each) rune sets
About a year ago, a friend gave me a “scrap” of oil-tanned leather, with encouragement for me to try making some simple shoes like he’d made for his lovely wife. I was doubtful at first if there was enough leather there to make a pair of shoes with, and so found a tutorial online and drafted a pattern in paper before testing it on less nice leather I had in stash. This style of shoes has many names, including bog shoes, Roman shoes, Iron Age shoes, medieval moccasins, Ghillies, and more. Shoes of this style have been in use for thousands of years, and still are today in Irish dancing and other niches.
Having reassured myself that the amount of leather needed was far smaller than I’d feared, and with a pattern to lay out and figure out how to get the most of the nicer leather I’d been gifted, I felt comfortable plowing ahead. I did end up slightly tweaking the design of the shoes after testing and wearing the first pair. I made the heel about half an inch taller, sorted out a better, cleaner plan for how to stitch the heels up, and shifted the taps for the over-the-foot lacing forward a bit to fix some of the gapping I experienced with the first pair. In the pictures above, the improved pattern in on the right, and on top on the other to compare.
When I went to cut out the leather, I already had a vague idea of the other pieces I wanted to try to get out of the material if I could, and carefully rearranged the pattern pieces for the largest objects several times, lightly tracing with a bone awl, until I found the most efficient layout.
Simply tracing with the bone awl worked so well (while still being easily and completely erasable with just a little rubbing of the surface) that I used it for the final tracing as well. I made sure to flip over the shoe and mitten patterns to get one right and one left of each. I chose to cut one shoe piece out of the dead center of the leather with the intention of leaving an oblong donut shape which I could then spiral cut into one very long continuous piece of leather lacing, which ended up working even better than I’d hoped for. I’m sure I’ll find use for 70’ of lacing over the coming years! About 10 got used for lacing up the shoes. I then cut out the eight biggest pieces with a pair of scissors. It would have been more historically accurate to do so with a knife, but I am far less skilled and comfortable with that tool. Still at the big-shapes stage, I also found ways to get a simple slit belt and the shorter lacing points out of it without cutting into any of the pieces I could use for the other intended items.
This left me with enough scrap to pursue my second-tier priority projects. I did have to scale down my attempt at a Birka wallet and adjust the proportions a little to squeak out the pieces I needed, but given that I already know I was not going to be getting anywhere close to an exact replica because my material is so much thicker and the construction process changes I would need to make because of that, I didn’t sweat it. After that, I found space for a needle book case, a baseball-style toy ball, and all 16 (plus a spare!) tarp-tent grommets I’d really hoped to get out of the material. By that point, I was seriously down to scraps. Me being me, I love zero-waste crafting, and so did some brainstorming to come up with custom-fit thumb and forefinger thimbles and cup-cover corner weights for the biggest pieces left. Then I went through and cut out as many uniform disks as I could for rune sets. What was left by that point was truly unusable for anything other that stuffing, which it ended up being (the perfect amount, even) for the toy ball.
With everything cut out, I started sewing the shoes. To prepare, I cut out the toe tabs and then want back and rounded them off, again with scissors. I then used a needle-nose modern awl and pliers to start the lacing holes in all the tabs, and a bone all to widen them sufficiently. I could have used a leather hole punch for this, but that felt too modern. I then did roughly the same thing for the stitching holes along the heel. I marked out my desired spacing by scratching lines, which I later easily rubbed out once the holes her punched. I only used the smaller awl for these, since they are being sewn with thread, not lacing with strips of leather.
To do that sewing, I used a thick natural linen sewing thread, waxed with beeswax, and a bone needle. You can see the steps I took to sew up the heel in the pictures below. It was definitely overkill and not ideally historically plausible or accurate to stitch them that heavily, geometrically, and so it looked that clean in the inside, but that’s just my personality lol. I also then chose to stitch over the edges on the inside where the first round of stitching didn’t do so already, gong through the same holes.
Just like that, I had perfectly fitting bog shoes!
The next thing I played with was the needle book. Rather than using cut fabric for the internal pages, I decided to felt my own. Just on a whim. It came out very soft, and was fun to make. I did so by sticking some mystery wool (gut instinct says rabbit fiber?) I didn’t want to ever spin (too short of a staple) into a ziplock bag with some warm water and a little soap, and agitating it for about an hour, rinsing it, and letting it dry flat overnight. The actual construction of the book was very simple, and I now use it for all my historical bone and brass needles and pins. The felt came out a little long, so I folded it over into a thread remnant pocket, which I ended up really liking. (Of course a kitty had to help with the photoshoot…)
For the mittens, which I have no historical basis for, just practical needs, I found it helpful to use a pin to hold the pieces aligned while sewing the pieces together. For both it and the toy ball I used what’s modernly called a baseball stitch.
When I was nearly done stitching the ball closed, I stuffed in the very last of the scraps from the original piece of leather, which turned out to be exactly the right amount which made me very happy! I also really like how the darker and creased edges of the original piece of leather add interest to both the mittens and toy ball.
I didn’t take pictures of the scaled-down Birka wallet in progress, since I knew going in it’s a poor replica of the historical original. In order to stitch through up to 5 layers of this leather, I had to open all the stitching holes with an awl before I could get a needle through. I used a proper saddle stitch for this one. (More help from the other kitty!)
I failed to take progress or close-up pictures of the thimbles or tarp grommets, the latter of which I haven’t yet put to use. Here is the cup cover and leather lacing.
Last up were the rune sets. Again, no historical precedent, but makes me happy! I did my best to sort them into shade-matching sets, making sure than none with creases or marks would be left blank. I then used a wood burning pen (in the basement, because holy branding stink, Batman!) to mark the Elder Futhark alphabet onto each set, leaving an additional one blank, which is my preference for esoteric use of rune sets.
That’s it for this “scrap” of leather!
Next Time: -I want to try using a small reproduction knife for cutting out all of the pieces, to make it just that much more historically accurate. -I want to make another pair of these bog shoes out of a slightly thicker leather, but otherwise the same as I’m happy with the fit and appearance. -If I can get my hands on some sinew, I’d like to try using that instead of the linen thread for sewing those shoes. -I want to try making a 1:1 scale Birka wallet out of some much thinner leather. -I want to make another needle book with a fold over and wrap strap closure, and with thicker felted internal pages. -And I want to try making some completely different items, such as true Viking-era turn shoes.
All in all, I feel this was a great learning experience, and certainly bolstered my confidence working with the medium!
Sources: (Really just for the shoes) DeRushie, Nicole, Bog Fashion: Recreating Bronze and Iron Age Clothes. ChronoCopia Publishing, 2026. Rabeiga, Kamil, Viking Dress Code: Textile and Leather Clothing in Scandinavia. Triglav, 2019. Ewing, Thor, Viking Clothing. The History Press, 2009.
Give me a sizable scrap of oil-tanned leather, and I will make:
1 pair of bog shoes 1 pair of 3-piece mittens 1 basic slit-belt, a scaled-down Birka wallet 70 feet of leather lacing 10 short ties, a new (more HA) needle book case 2 custom thimbles, a toy ball (with all of the scrap for stuffing) 4 cup cover corner weights 17 tarp/tent grommets & 7 (25 each) rune sets
About a year ago, a friend gave me a “scrap” of oil-tanned leather, with encouragement for me to try making some simple shoes like he’d made for his lovely wife. I was doubtful at first if there was enough leather there to make a pair of shoes with, and so found a tutorial online and drafted a pattern in paper before testing it on less nice leather I had in stash. This style of shoes has many names, including bog shoes, Roman shoes, Iron Age shoes, medieval moccasins, Ghillies, and more. Shoes of this style have been in use for thousands of years, and still are today in Irish dancing and other niches.
Having reassured myself that the amount of leather needed was far smaller than I’d feared, and with a pattern to lay out and figure out how to get the most of the nicer leather I’d been gifted, I felt comfortable plowing ahead. I did end up slightly tweaking the design of the shoes after testing and wearing the first pair. I made the heel about half an inch taller, sorted out a better, cleaner plan for how to stitch the heels up, and shifted the taps for the over-the-foot lacing forward a bit to fix some of the gapping I experienced with the first pair. In the pictures above, the improved pattern in on the right, and on top on the other to compare.
When I went to cut out the leather, I already had a vague idea of the other pieces I wanted to try to get out of the material if I could, and carefully rearranged the pattern pieces for the largest objects several times, lightly tracing with a bone awl, until I found the most efficient layout.
Simply tracing with the bone awl worked so well (while still being easily and completely erasable with just a little rubbing of the surface) that I used it for the final tracing as well. I made sure to flip over the shoe and mitten patterns to get one right and one left of each. I chose to cut one shoe piece out of the dead center of the leather with the intention of leaving an oblong donut shape which I could then spiral cut into one very long continuous piece of leather lacing, which ended up working even better than I’d hoped for. I’m sure I’ll find use for 70’ of lacing over the coming years! About 10 got used for lacing up the shoes. I then cut out the eight biggest pieces with a pair of scissors. It would have been more historically accurate to do so with a knife, but I am far less skilled and comfortable with that tool. Still at the big-shapes stage, I also found ways to get a simple slit belt and the shorter lacing points out of it without cutting into any of the pieces I could use for the other intended items.
This left me with enough scrap to pursue my second-tier priority projects. I did have to scale down my attempt at a Birka wallet and adjust the proportions a little to squeak out the pieces I needed, but given that I already know I was not going to be getting anywhere close to an exact replica because my material is so much thicker and the construction process changes I would need to make because of that, I didn’t sweat it. After that, I found space for a needle book case, a baseball-style toy ball, and all 16 (plus a spare!) tarp-tent grommets I’d really hoped to get out of the material. By that point, I was seriously down to scraps. Me being me, I love zero-waste crafting, and so did some brainstorming to come up with custom-fit thumb and forefinger thimbles and cup-cover corner weights for the biggest pieces left. Then I went through and cut out as many uniform disks as I could for rune sets. What was left by that point was truly unusable for anything other that stuffing, which it ended up being (the perfect amount, even) for the toy ball.
With everything cut out, I started sewing the shoes. To prepare, I cut out the toe tabs and then want back and rounded them off, again with scissors. I then used a needle-nose modern awl and pliers to start the lacing holes in all the tabs, and a bone all to widen them sufficiently. I could have used a leather hole punch for this, but that felt too modern. I then did roughly the same thing for the stitching holes along the heel. I marked out my desired spacing by scratching lines, which I later easily rubbed out once the holes her punched. I only used the smaller awl for these, since they are being sewn with thread, not lacing with strips of leather.
To do that sewing, I used a thick natural linen sewing thread, waxed with beeswax, and a bone needle. You can see the steps I took to sew up the heel in the pictures below. It was definitely overkill and not ideally historically plausible or accurate to stitch them that heavily, geometrically, and so it looked that clean in the inside, but that’s just my personality lol. I also then chose to stitch over the edges on the inside where the first round of stitching didn’t do so already, gong through the same holes.
Just like that, I had perfectly fitting bog shoes!
The next thing I played with was the needle book. Rather than using cut fabric for the internal pages, I decided to felt my own. Just on a whim. It came out very soft, and was fun to make. I did so by sticking some mystery wool (gut instinct says rabbit fiber?) I didn’t want to ever spin (too short of a staple) into a ziplock bag with some warm water and a little soap, and agitating it for about an hour, rinsing it, and letting it dry flat overnight. The actual construction of the book was very simple, and I now use it for all my historical bone and brass needles and pins. The felt came out a little long, so I folded it over into a thread remnant pocket, which I ended up really liking. (Of course a kitty had to help with the photoshoot…)
For the mittens, which I have no historical basis for, just practical needs, I found it helpful to use a pin to hold the pieces aligned while sewing the pieces together. For both it and the toy ball I used what’s modernly called a baseball stitch.
When I was nearly done stitching the ball closed, I stuffed in the very last of the scraps from the original piece of leather, which turned out to be exactly the right amount which made me very happy! I also really like how the darker and creased edges of the original piece of leather add interest to both the mittens and toy ball.
I didn’t take pictures of the scaled-down Birka wallet in progress, since I knew going in it’s a poor replica of the historical original. In order to stitch through up to 5 layers of this leather, I had to open all the stitching holes with an awl before I could get a needle through. I used a proper saddle stitch for this one. (More help from the other kitty!)
I failed to take progress or close-up pictures of the thimbles or tarp grommets, the latter of which I haven’t yet put to use. Here is the cup cover and leather lacing.
Last up were the rune sets. Again, no historical precedent, but makes me happy! I did my best to sort them into shade-matching sets, making sure than none with creases or marks would be left blank. I then used a wood burning pen (in the basement, because holy branding stink, Batman!) to mark the Elder Futhark alphabet onto each set, leaving an additional one blank, which is my preference for esoteric use of rune sets.
That’s it for this “scrap” of leather!
Next Time: -I want to try using a small reproduction knife for cutting out all of the pieces, to make it just that much more historically accurate. -I want to make another pair of these bog shoes out of a slightly thicker leather, but otherwise the same as I’m happy with the fit and appearance. -If I can get my hands on some sinew, I’d like to try using that instead of the linen thread for sewing those shoes. -I want to try making a 1:1 scale Birka wallet out of some much thinner leather. -I want to make another needle book with a fold over and wrap strap closure, and with thicker felted internal pages. -And I want to try making some completely different items, such as true Viking-era turn shoes.
All in all, I feel this was a great learning experience, and certainly bolstered my confidence working with the medium!
Sources: (Really just for the shoes) DeRushie, Nicole, Bog Fashion: Recreating Bronze and Iron Age Clothes. ChronoCopia Publishing, 2026. Rabeiga, Kamil, Viking Dress Code: Textile and Leather Clothing in Scandinavia. Triglav, 2019. Ewing, Thor, Viking Clothing. The History Press, 2009.
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