Spiffing Up

c1770 Child's Ticking Stripe Shoes

With all the children going back to school, I thought I would share these super cunning little shoes with ya'll. As a mom myself, the children were always asking to spiff up their wardrobe. I would jazz up britches with fun embroidered patches...that sort of thing. When I first saw these shoes they immediately looked like something I would do! Eighteenth century children's shoes are rare enough, but this example really spoke to me. They are hand stitched from a blue stripe ticking

 Upon looking closer...they have been overstitched/embroidered in pink. The construction of the shoes tells us this was not an afterthought. The silk binding, now quite faded, is also pink, as are the kid covered latchet buttons and heels.

I would love to know the original story behind these shoes~ you know there has got to be a great one! They are fully lined so the back of the embroidery cannot be studied, 

but beneath the shelter of the latchets, the embroidery remains bright and vivid. Was there special significance to the blue ticking stripe??? Did the owner have a fondness for all things pink? I wonder if these matched the outfit they were worn with???

In any case, they are just cute as a button.....and in typical Eighteenth century fashion, the stitching on them is beautiful and very skilled. Their wedge heels are covered in the same pink kid (goatskin) leather as the buttons

They show obvious signs of being worn. The stitching channel for the wedge heel has been worn away, exposing the stitching. Super wide throats on these with ever so slight rounded toes.

One of my favorite aspects of early shoes are the soles~ one had to have very strong hands to stitch thru the layers, but yet have a delicate touch at the same time.  I would have liked to have been a shoemaker.

This is actually the first pair of latchet shoes in the collection to have button closures. They make perfect sense though on a child's shoe~ it would be much easier to button once than fight with a buckle to get on and off.