Leatherwork
I have very rough ideas about making some leather watch straps to accompany my watches, and a stretch-goal is to make my own moc-toe leather boots and maybe even dress shoes. Plastic 3D printing should lower the barriers to entry by making it cheaper and easier to get custom 'lasts', around which the shoes are formed. The most concrete of my leatherworking plans, though still very much in the brainstorm and planning stage, is an American flag pennyloafer.
American Flag Pennyloafers
I saw the Martin Dingman pennyloafers pictured below, and thought they'd make a great excuse to get started on my shoe-making adventures. Beyond making them myself just for the sake of it, a big motivation to make these rather than simply buy them is that the bottoms of the shoes are slippery leather, whereas I want a more casual (and grippy) shoe. The gameplan is to start with an old cheap suede loafer and paint the stars and stripes pattern onto it. There's quite a bit of advice about this online, but it tends to center around sneakers, so some loafers/boat shoes should be interesting enough to post, I think. After that, I'll make my own loafers from scratch - I've already found a 'pattern' to cut the leather with - and I think the paintjob will look better if the painting is done before the assembly, so these will hopefully be an improvement on the quick-and-dirty first try.
