Network essay: mother's thousand-layer bottom cloth shoes layers of thoughts

Mother's favorite shoes are the mother's thousand-layer bottom, standing firm that walks right down to the world.

My favorite thing to do is to repay my mother, and I will never change my mind when I travel to the ends of the earth.

This is the nineties Xie Xiaodong a popular north and south of the "China baby" in the two sentences, a pair of thousand layer bottom cloth shoes, full of strong homesickness. A pair of cloth shoes with a thousand layers of soles was once a needlework job that women in farming families had to do.

In the spring, before the ice and snow are exhausted, the mother took advantage of this time to start making single shoes for the whole family. The process is complicated and time-consuming, and it takes four or five days to make a pair of single shoes at the earliest.

The first step in the process of making a pair of shoes is to make a cloth shell. Mother moved the necessary tools to the yard, a long table, a colander of waste cloth (beforehand to the waste of clothes along the line of the split cloth), a large bowl of paste, a pair of scissors. First on the table to brush a layer of paste, lay a layer of cloth, cut off the edges of the fabric, and then brush a layer of paste to lay a layer of cloth, probably laying seven or eight layers, it's done. The long table will be dried in the yard, the sun warm baked. On cloudy days, they had to beat the cloth shells inside the house, and after beating them, they turned the table on its side and put it on the fire wall to bake until the cloth shells were dry. If you have a large family, you'll usually have to make several tables in a row before you can make enough shoes for the whole family.

The next step was to make lasagna soles, and my mother's big bed became her temporary workbench. She took out the paper shoe pattern pressed under the head of the bed and divided it into soles and uppers. After sewing a few stitches on the pattern and fixing it to the cloth shell, she traced the outline of the sole with a pencil, then removed the pattern and cut it out along the pencil marks. A lasagna usually requires six or seven layers of fabric shells, stacked to a thickness of about one centimeter. Each layer of the edge of the sole with a strip of cotton white cloth wrapped in a circle, glued with paste, placed on the top and bottom of the two layers of the outward side should be covered with white cloth glued, several layers of soles stacked in alignment, the top of a needle, the bottom of a needle respectively, fixed. The above work is only the beginning of a thousand layers of soles, the next is to do the most laborious stage of the cloth shoes - the sole of the shoe, with a big foot needle threaded with a thick white cord, the first force to the tip of the needle into the sole of the shoe, and then with the aid of the thimble to make the force of the needle through the sole of the shoe, turned to the other side, with pliers clamped to the tip of the needle on the one side, pulling out the needle, and with it, the cord, and pull it tightly. To make the soles of shoes, you need a big needle and a thick thread, and the stitches are fine and even, so that the soles of shoes are beautiful and strong.

After the soles are finished, make the uppers. The upper is made by cutting a layer of cloth and a layer of velvet according to the shoe pattern, sewing the two layers together, using white cloth to cover the edge of the circle connecting the upper and the sole and sewing it for a week, using black cloth to cover the edge of the upper and sewing it together, and sewing elasticity on the mouth of the shoe to make the upper more close to the foot. Then sew the upper firmly to the sole, so a pair of shoes is completed!

Even if the economic conditions were very difficult, my mother would not reduce the process in order to save fabric, and the shoes she made always had white soles, delicate uppers and tabs, which were beautiful, comfortable and wearable. Sometimes, when she was in a hurry, she would buy plastic or foam soles, which saved her the effort of nailing the soles. However, as long as there was enough time, my mother would still make lasagna soles meticulously, with unique innovations in style, color, and materials. She would make sandals and slippers made of cloth, with an old head flower sewn on the upper, or decorations removed from old dresses; the colors and fabrics were not limited to the monotonous striped velvet, which was the mainstream of the time, which was red or black, but were orange, pink, green, and patchworked with scraps of cloth, and sometimes there was a string of plum blossoms embroidered with colorful threads on the uppers, a tweeting bird, a clump of flowers and grass, and two children's shoes. a clump of flowers and grass, two fluttering butterflies.

The most exciting moment was when the new shoes were about to be ready, when I saw that my mother was about to finish the shoes in her hands, so I stayed in front of her and refused to leave, waiting patiently for the last few stitches on the upper and the buckle on the tab, and then I was handed a pair of shoes in front of her, "Xiao-Juan, take them and try them out." I quickly found paper to lay on the floor and took off my old shoes before I started trying on the new ones. "The thumbs are a little cramped." My mother took the shoes I took off, stuck a pair of pliers into them, and pushed them forward a few times, and when I put them on again, they weren't so tight. New shoes are usually a little crowded, but the cotton shoes are very flexible, wear a day is very close to the foot curve, lightweight and comfortable, there is a natural breathability.

The day is warm, take off the stupid cotton shoes, put on the new single shoes, carefully protected, the new shoes only in the school time to wear, in the school also to avoid running, as soon as you come home immediately back to the old shoes. In the spring snow days, the road to school is muddy, in order to protect the new shoes not to be soiled by mud and water, in the potholes on the dirt road, tiptoe jumping to choose a place to foot, but also became a fun way to go to school!

When I was in elementary school in the brigade to study, most of my classmates wear cloth shoes, a variety of shoes, some of the upper style simple, labor-saving, but wear it is not stable, easy to take off the heel; there is a rough workmanship, the edge of the sole is not wrapped, resulting in a circle of threads burlap, not enough to be beautiful; there is a figure of the number of stitches in the sole of the fast and the sole of the Na not Qi insufficient, the bottom of the shoes are prone to wear; some of them only use a plastic bottom or a foam bottom, not comfortable and easily deformed and damaged; there are also some of them only use plastic bottoms or foam bottoms, not comfortable and easily deformed and damaged. Some of them are made of plastic or foam soles, which are not comfortable to wear and are easily deformed and damaged; some of them are made with meticulous workmanship, but from the point of view of the cut, how can I feel that they are not as good as the ones on my own feet, and I often rejoice in them secretly. From a pair of cloth shoes, you can also see whether the hostess of each family is hardworking and skillful.

Three or two pairs of single shoes can be worn from spring to fall. Cotton shoes, on the other hand, are made in the late fall after the farm work is over. Cotton shoes are far more complicated than single shoes. The soles of the shoes are the same practice, while the uppers need a few more processes. The uppers were made of thick cotton and had to be locked with eyelets, which made the labor time much longer. My mother usually spent the entire late fall and winter making cotton shoes for the whole family. And before the New Year, each of us would get a new pair of cotton shoes.

After studying in college, a few of my sisters had already left home to go out to work, and my mother would still make cloth shoes in her free time, just for the days when we came home, so that we could have cloth shoes to wear. The first time I saw this, I was able to see the woman's face, and I was able to see her face, and I was able to see her face, and I was able to see her face, and I was able to see her face. At the end of August, the shoes were brought from Fuhai, Xinjiang to Xi'an, and then from Xi'an to Shanghai during the winter vacation. The last pair of shoes, I have always treasured, after graduation a few times, I do not know where it was lost.

A few sisters married, mother always before the birth of the grandson began to prepare a pair of exquisite small shoes like art, the same as the equidistant series, a pair of greater than a pair. When it comes to family members who have the opportunity to go to the sister's home, it will be brought on the way. The family is spread out too far, Xinjiang, Sichuan two places apart, the shoes brought over, perhaps the child has grown up to wear it.

Nowadays, the thousand-layer bottom cloth shoes have become a national intangible cultural heritage. In today's developed manufacturing industry, the cost of producing a pair of shoes in a factory is much lower than a pair of handmade cloth shoes, probably in addition to some of the rural areas, has rarely seen this purely handmade cloth shoes. Nowadays, there are also handmade cloth shoes on the Internet, some of which are labeled as "health shoes", giving them a Chinese cultural 'selling point' for sale. The online sales of cloth shoes processing machine, I think this cloth shoes will not be the real handmade shoes.

From small to large, I do not know how many pairs of bad shoes. Year after year, the shoe size is getting bigger and bigger, the mother's rheumatism is getting more and more serious, the finger joints can not use too much strength, the hand began to tremble, the eyes are spent, when wearing the needle always can not aim at the eye of the needle, a pair of shoes will take longer and longer. Now, the wrinkles have deepened, the hair has turned gray, and the size of the shoes in my mother's hands has returned to the size of a few-month-old baby. At the age of ignorance, I had done things like deliberately destroying old shoes in order to ask for new ones; I had the capriciousness of gambling and refusing to wear cloth shoes in order to let my mother buy shoes; and I also complained to my mother for making a bunch of seemingly useless baby shoes. All of these rebellions, tempers and complaints to the mother, like a stream of turbidity into the sea, was silently tolerated and purified.

From time to time, I recall the appearance of my mother's shoe soles. By the window or under the kerosene lamp, my mother held the soles in her left hand and pinched the needle with her right hand, concentrating on one needle and weaving it in and out, and from time to time, scratching her hair with the tip of the needle. We sisters were as noisy as sparrows in the room, but we never disturbed my mother's peace. Sometimes, when the mood struck, my mother would listen to the radio and hum a song as she did her work. If you're not careful, the thimble slipped, the needle stuck in the hand, the blood flowed out, with the mouth to suck a little, continue to sew a needle.

Mother's skinny body, is how to use the strength of the needle through a centimeter-thick layer of soles? At that time, the family did not even have an awl for shoe soles, so they had to rely on the strength of their hands. The pair of hands ah, short and rough, daily housework, farm work, raising pigs, chickens, cows and sheep, the palm of the hand has been a thick layer of calluses, fingers a crack in the black can not be washed away, there are a few fresh scars.

Now less children's noisy, lonely lamp under the mother and how the labor? Perhaps remembering some of our childhood anecdotes, a person laughed out loud; perhaps remembering a case seen on TV, leaving home to worry about us; perhaps thinking about what else to prepare for the grandchildren? Thinking of these, must forget the work in hand, a person quietly for a long time in a daze. The mother will be all her care, advice, worry, miss, hope, one by one collection, dense into the bottom of the shoe.

The thousand layers of cloth shoes ah, layers of thoughts, needle condensation love!