Make Your Own Baby Shoes Kit — Ake 9 cm (0–6 months) | Umeloihc Japan

Anyone can buy a baby gift off a shelf. This one, you make yourself.

The Umeloihc kit is everything you need to hand-sew a pair of real leather shoes — quite possibly the first shoes this baby ever wears. It takes two to four hours. No sewing experience is required. And what you hand over at the end isn't a kit: it's a finished pair of shoes, in a gift box, that you made.

That's the whole point of it. A friend has a baby, and the choice is another toy, another sleeper, another thing that arrives and gets outgrown — or this, which cost you an evening and which they will still have long after the baby has grown out of it.

The Ake, 9 cm

A simple moccasin-like shape, one of Umeloihc's original designs, meant for pre-waddling babies. Smart enough for a christening or a night out. Six colours.

What's in the kit

• Pre-cut vegetable-tanned leather uppers
• Outsoles and insoles
• Laces, needles and thread
• Illustrated instruction book
• Gift box

Choosing a size

• 9 cm — generally up to 6 months
• 12 cm — generally up to 18 months
• 13 cm — generally up to 24 months

Baby sizing varies. If you're buying ahead, size up.

Made and processed in Japan. The leather is coloured using gentle vegetable tanning.