Making a Wholecut Pattern
Most patterns are some variation of loafer, oxford, derby, or wholecut. You can get creative with the details to change individual designs, but the basic style and rules for pattern making conform to these four styles. One of these days I’ll get around to writing a guide for loafers and oxfords, but here is how I make a back seamed wholecut pattern. Interesting side note, a true wholecut doesn’t need a pattern. You just take a wet piece of leather and stretch it around the shoe, slowly getting rid of all of the wrinkles by stretching and hammering. Then do it another three times for the second shoe and the lining. Afterwards, you cut out the leg opening and facing, then attach to the lining and last it a final time. I’ve yet to attempt this, maybe someday when I am a real shoemaker!
So you guys should know how to make a pattern base from the Derby Pattern instructions. This one starts the same, tape off the last, find your widest point, mark your C point, where the horizontal line across the widest point intersects with the center line. Shift C up by 5 mm to make C’. Mark your B point, the height of the heel, size 42 is 6 cm, for each size up or down increase/decrease by 1 mm. Mark your A point, about 7–7.5 cm up from C’, that will be how high your facing goes. Draw a line from B to D (D is midpoint of the line C’W), then a perpendicular line at A down to the BD line. You can use those reference points to draw your topline. You do all of this while the tape is still on the last.
Peel the tape and lay it down on some backing paper. If you recall from the Derby Pattern guide, you had to do some cutting of the tape at the C’W line and do an overlap to get rid of some of the curvature. Don’t do that for this pattern, you can add a relief cut if the tape wont lay flat as pictured above. Don’t forget to remove some space from the heel later on, 1 mm per relief cut. After the tape is transferred to the paper, extend the AC’ line out a few mm to make sure its straight, and mark the highest point on the toe on the pattern base.
Draw a centerline, then align A and the point you marked on the toe. Draw your topline and heel area.
Keeping the pattern base in the same position (A and high point on centerline), shift it in until C’ is on the centerline. Now draw the middle portion of the pattern.
Align C’ and the high point with the centerline and draw the toe area.
Now just align your pattern with the base of the heel and the middle line you drew and connect the lines.
At this stage, add your lasting allowances (2.3 cm in the toe, 2.5 cm for the rest of the shoe). Add your duck tail and 2 mm to the back of the heel.
Ducktail Interlude: To do this sort of back seam I line the heels up on, clip them together, and do a stitch (on the flesh side), hammer it flat, add some reinforcement tape over the seam, then do two parallel stitches (should hit the reinforcement tape) up through the ducktail.
Back to the pattern! Flip the pattern base and do it all again to draw the inside of the shoe. I added a cut about 4 cm in from the heel here, that is to create the “shorts” for the lining. Cut out your facing with a little space between them, base of the facing is your C’ point. Draw your eyelets, without messing it up multiple times like I did here. Add about 2–3 mm to the inside curve on the topline like usual as well.
You can use your upper pattern to create your lining pattern, just add the 11 mm extra on the top, this will help you line up the lining and upper, and you can nail it to the last there, so the topline doesn’t shift while lasting.
Lining shorts and tongue. I do the shorts so I can flip the lining to the roughout side on the heel, helps prevent heel slip.
Note on assembly. They’re pretty easy to put together, you already know how to stitch the heel so that’s 80% of the upper assembly right there. Once you have the lining shorts stitched on, just line up the upper with the lining, stitch the topline, and you’re done! Add piping before that step if that’s what you’re into.
Actually, not quite done, still have to attach the tongue. I usually extend the tongue lining about 1.5cm. Glue the base of the tongue to the lining, then stitch it directly to the lining.
Make sure to punch out the base of the facing instead of just cutting, and add a reinforcement stitch. Otherwise it will tear. I just loop some thread 5–6 times, afterwards do a bunch of loops around the thread, making a small knot by looping the thread through itself. Man, that sounds confusing to write but I don’t know how else to describe it. Play around with it, its not too complicated. Oh, I do this step before attaching the tongue, because its a pain in the ass to do afterwards.
Just showing off this pair at this point. Well, another note on lasting so its not entirely gratuitous. When you make other pattern types, you’re making a 3D shape. With a wholecut, you lose a lot of that contouring so it’s much more difficult to last. With the other wholecut I made, I struggled lasting it and since I use stiffening paste you feel like you need to hurry it up. This time I got the upper wet with a spray bottle and did a really thorough pre-lasting. Once it dried, I took it off the last (shown here, it basically took on the shape 100%), then put in the heel counter and paste and lasted it for real. Made it so much easier!
There it is, me showing off. I am ridiculously happy with how this pair turned out. I bought this hide when I was visiting Mexico last time, I was there a few weeks ago and tried to find a hide with such a pronounced center ridge and couldn’t, also the color and texture on this pair is particularly good, if you zoom in you’ll notice a ton of little white spots.
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