Madeline has a pair of shoes that she loves that broke recently. She likes to wear them with the strap pulled extremely tightly, which led to the failure. The piece of fabric that held the metal ring for the velcro strap came off, but it was simple enough to make a replacement out of leather.

Fortunately only one shoe failed. This meant that I could remove the same part from both shoes – one would be damaged, but the other could serve as a pattern for duplication.

After cutting out two replacement pieces, I painted them both pink. I wasn’t able to mix an exact color match, but I got close enough that it’s not readily noticeable. I punched the holes in the leather for sewing, then used contact cement to adhere the strap to the outside. Once secured, I ran a needle through one of the punched holes to help with alignment when glueing the other side of the flap to the inside, making sure to loop through the metal ring.

After it was all glued up, I used a speedy stitcher so that I could apply some real force to puncture the fabric while sewing it up. I wasn’t sure how best to hide the knot – I worried that leaving the knot on the inside would make it uncomfortable to wear and cause the knot to unravel. Instead, I placed the big ugly knot on the outside.