I Transmigrated Into A Fantasy World To Farm And Build Houses!-Chapter 232: Cloth Shoes
Eric’s gaze inadvertently swept over the shoes everyone was wearing.
Although the Dwarves’ shoes were simple in style, they were still much better than the Snow Wolves just wrapping a piece of animal skin around their feet.
He had wanted to make a good pair of shoes for his tribesmen for a long time but never had the time. Today, he finally remembered.
"Aunt Iris, don’t rush to make hairpins. Let me ask you a question first: what are everyone’s shoe soles made of?"
Eric ran to Iris’s side, who was enthusiastically discussing hairpin styles and which gem colors were more beautiful, bent down, tugged at her sleeve, and asked.
Iris was still immersed in the heated discussion. Everyone had different tastes, and everyone expressed their own opinions. Being pulled away by Eric at this moment, she was stunned for a while before answering.
"Oh, the shoes we wear in winter have soles made of wood wrapped in fabric or animal skin. In summer, we use woven grass ropes. Why?"
Eric smiled mysteriously: "Aunt Iris, do you want to make shoes that are more comfortable and fit better?"
"You little rascal, if you have a good method, strictly speaking, that would be better!" Iris couldn’t help but laugh seeing his demeanor.
Eric giggled a few times, quite pleased with himself. They were at Luban’s house. Eric was very familiar with this place. He unceremoniously found some fabric scraps, asked for a bowl of flour, along with a brush, scissors, and other tools.
In the past, when people were poor, most used grass shoes. The scholarly and official classes used wooden clogs or leather boots. Later, cloth shoes appeared. The soles were made of fabric scraps and coarse cloth sheets. Only wealthy families had shoes and boots made of silk and brocade.
It wasn’t until 1947 that the ancestors requisitioned military tires from the French colonialists, and through the hands of Mr. Nguyen Van Sau, created the legendary Uncle Ho’s sandals.
Back to the present, flour made into paste - Eric was too familiar with this process. Back in the day, working part-time pasting flyers on electric poles, he and his colleagues often used this method to save money on white glue.
He tried to spread the fabric scraps flat, gently brushed a layer of paste on them, brushed evenly, and left them to dry. Iris’s house had a lot of cotton scraps left over; soles made from them would be softer than those made of linen.
Eric’s actions attracted Kailin and the other females. Everyone gathered around him, interested to see what he intended to do.
Every time Eric made something new, everyone shifted from initial skepticism to expecting the finished product. Every item was very useful.
Eric drew a pattern according to Iris’s foot size and cut out pieces of fabric of equivalent size on the dried cloth sheet. Truly unable to wait, he cast wind magic to blow them dry.
The strips of cloth used to rim the thousand-layer soles were best made of white cotton cloth. Fortunately, not much was used, so it wasn’t wasteful.
Each small strip of cotton cloth was brushed with paste and rimmed around each sole piece. He repeated this, wrapping all the cut-out sole pieces. Then he stacked them up and used an iron needle threaded with the strongest hemp thread to stitch them densely together.
Eric handed the final step to Iris. Humans needed tools to punch holes first to sew this, but Dwarves didn’t need to; they could sew straight through.
Every corner of the sole was densely stitched with hemp thread. Eric even helped press it hard a few times to ensure the sole was solid.
The females who had figured out the method gathered around, passing the freshly made thousand-layer sole around in astonishment to examine it.
"This is much more comfortable than wooden boards!" Kailin pressed her palm into the sole a few times and exclaimed in surprise.
Animal skin wrapped around wooden boards, no matter how soft, couldn’t change the nature of the wood, which couldn’t bend with the movement of the foot. How could it be as comfortable as this kind of thousand-layer sole?
Eric stood aside smugly.
He had watched, if not a thousand, then eight hundred videos of making handmade cloth shoes; the method was memorized by heart. Those handmade cloth shoes and embroidered shoes hanging on Shopee sold like hotcakes at high prices.
Of course, handmade goods were mainly female items. Vietnamese men mostly wore canvas shoes with rubber soles only when going to work, school, or flirting with girls; otherwise, it was the combo of shorts, tank top, and honeycomb sandals.
"If you like it, just draw the foot size, and follow my method," Eric held up the paper pattern and said with a smile.
Iris happily took the cardboard pattern, imitated the process to make a sole for the other foot, using the sole pieces Eric hadn’t finished using.
"Oh my, it just happened to use up all these fabric scraps. Otherwise, they could only be saved for patching clothes."
This was also an advantage of thousand-layer soles. In the era when this type of shoe was popular, materials were scarce, and previous generations thought of many ways to save resources.
Thousand-layer soles also didn’t suffocate the feet. With animal skin shoes, if ordinary people wore them, not getting foot fungus was already very lucky.
Even the Dwarves, whose bodies were more robust than humans, had many people facing this problem. Dwarves exercised a lot and sweated easily.
A group of females happily began to go around the houses looking for fabric scraps. Although Eric said using whole pieces of fabric was also possible and even better, everyone thought of using up the scraps first.
Kailin even enthusiastically collected fabric scraps from the homes of Dwarves who weren’t home to make soles for them.
Eric’s wind magic was useful today too; he silently helped blow dry the paste.
The Dwarf sisters immediately got to work. Some even went home to measure their partners’ feet, cut out cardboard patterns, and used them to cut soles.
Naturally, the first pair of thousand-layer soles they made was undoubtedly for Eric. He didn’t refuse and happily accepted them.
This type of sole was best made into cloth shoes, but making them into boots for winter wasn’t bad either.
Using Eric’s skills to make boots would be a complete waste of these soles, so he decidedly asked Iris for help. No one in his house knew needlework. Iris was also used to helping him with these things. Hearing he wanted to make a pair of boots, she planned to use the best animal skin in the house.
The tribe had been popular with knitting sweaters lately, and Eric had contributed quite a few clothing patterns. With the help of the Dwarves, the Snow Wolves finally stopped dressing like rough wanderers, and the styles of animal skin coats increased a lot.
Now that shoes were also being made, the image of the tribe could improve significantly. Eric felt very happy in his heart; he had wanted to take time to improve the dressing style of his tribesmen for a long time.
Before, there were no conditions, but now with materials, he drew many blueprints. Although the Snow Wolves didn’t like high-profile styles like the Black Wolves, dressing more neatly than before would certainly be better.
Fine feathers make fine birds; clothing influenced a person’s image greatly. Even though the Snow Wolves were natural-born clothes hangers, wearing simple animal skin clothes before, a strong wind would blow their hair into a mess, making them look like vagrants with extremely high attractiveness.
Eric remembered the python the warriors hunted at the Ox-Head tribe. Not only was the meat delicious, but the skin was thin and tough. Being a high-level magic beast, the snakeskin also shimmered with hidden light; the material was too suitable for making boots.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t take it for personal use.
Although there were no boots made of python skin, a few days later, Iris used the sparkling silver fur of a Winged Tiger to make a pair of boots for Eric.
Combined with the thousand-layer soles, they were both comfortable and beautiful.
