How art thy feet shod?
Measure your leg around the points indicated in the illustration. Make sure you are wearing your breeches so you have enough room to tuck them in. Draw the shape shown in the next illustration, fitting your measurements at the appropriate places. Notice the shape is very slightly curved out at the bottom. Resist the tempation to make these perfectly close to the ankle. Long boots like these had extra room at the ankles to allow your heel to poke out a bit as you fit your foot into the boot. Without it, you would never get your foot back out later. So these half-chaps will simulate that extra room. Snip the seam allowance at the spot where the top will fold down to give the half-chaps that swashbuckling style. And that brings me to another point. You need to line the chaps with another material to hide the back of the vinyl when you fold the top of the boot down. I like to use suede-cloth, which is a knitted cloth material that looks like suede. It’s also called doe skin. The chaps do n
