These boots were made for...crawling? But styles like the floral boot (right, brown) will see babies through their first steps.
Briana Raday never expected to be at the helm of a baby shoe business. But looking back on it, maybe it was in the cards. Raday made her first pair of shoes when she was 8 years old — they were made out of cardboard and glue and “only lasted a day!” says Raday.
Now she uses sturdier materials, leather and fabric, to handcraft baby and toddler shoes for Sun and Lace, the business she runs out of her home near Stoughton.
Raday has always been crafty. She got her first sewing machine when she was 10 and made a lot of her clothes in junior high and high school. She started making baby clothes when she was pregnant with her first son and made her first pair of baby shoes when he was 9 months. Now the mother of two boys, ages 3 years and 17 months, Raday says her decision to start making and selling shoes was sort of an impulse: “But when I get an idea in my head I want to do it now.”
She launched her business in August 2015; the name, Sun and Lace, comes from the sunny fields full of Queen Anne’s Lace, a late-summer blooming wildflower, around her home.
Raday makes about eight different varieties of shoes and boots ($32-$46), including ballet-style flats, elastic-ankle moccasins and lace-up oxfords made with different shades of brown or off-white leather. Lace-up shoes come with a choice of homemade fabric laces.
She recently started offering bigger toddler sizes. Shoes are available in size 0 (newborn) through 10 (for a 3- or 4-year-old.) Not every style is always available — inventory sometimes depends on how many pairs of shoes she can make during her sons’ nap times.
To do all this she has four sewing machines, one of which is industrial — the others are regular home sewing and serging machines. The booties don’t have hard soles, so she doesn’t need anything “super fancy — yet,” says Raday. She does use a selection of special leather knives, scissors, wax and pens.
Raday sells her shoes from her website sunandlace.com, and uses social media like Instagram (she has over 9,000 followers) as a marketing tool. She’s sold about 800 pairs of shoes so far. “It’s humbling to know my shoes are all over the world,” she says.
She also sets up shop at craft shows like the One One Thousand Good Day Market in Madison and the Urban Farmgirl Main Street Market in Rockford. She will be selling her shoes next at the Dane Handmade Spring Show on April 14 in Monona.
Raday enjoys the human element that comes with selling at markets and hearing stories from people who have bought her shoes. She also loves when people share photos of her shoes on Instagram. “Someone will say, ‘My son took his first steps in them,’” Raday says. “I love seeing and hearing what adventures my shoes are up to!”
