If The Shoe Fits

One Hallowe'en, I was dressed as a "prior era" person - which means I didn't really have a costume, but just made something up to wear to work.  I tied my hair up in a low pony tail, wore a gold-trimmed jacket and lace ascot, rolled my pants up to my knees, wore knee socks and some plain black shoes.  This is how I imagine people dressed in the 1700's.

The refashion item for this post are the shoes.  The ascot doesn't count because it was just a length of lace folded around the neck.

The shoes were just some plain square toed ones to which I added a belt buckle.  It looked great!  People even asked where I bought them!  I wore them as regular shoes later on.

Here's what I did:

First, I sewed the belt buckle to a piece of elastic. You could actually use any piece of fabric, I just used elastic because that's what was on hand.

Front View

Back View

Then, I just taped it in place! This next picture is a bit fuzzy, but it;s just to show the masking tape:

Fold the elastic and tape to the front of the shoe on the inside only.

Et voila! your 1700's shoe is done:

 

What do you think?  The great thing is that if the buckles aren't right for your outfit, you can just untape them!