Slippers for Lily

My little girl turned 3 yesterday - where did that time go?!

Lily starts preschool in September and she will need slippers to wear indoors so I found these simple and comfortable leather ballet slippers with rubber soles. They are sold in many colours but her size was available only in rather pale vanilla yellow so I decided to add some colour...

I like to buy Christmas and Easter decorations after the season is over, when they are on sale for very little money, usually in large department stores that want to get rid of their outdated stock fast. One can find many interesting pieces, beads, ribbons and other adornments that can be used for many creative projects all year round.

Two flowers, cut out of thick yellow felt (once a part of Easter garland), were perfect for my makeover. I had no problem sewing them on soft leather, using a large needle and some aqua blue embroidery thread, which I simply tied in a knot on the inside of the slippers.

Et voilà!

Cath Kidston, the creative force behind U-handblog, a place where you can find loads of fabulous& free sewing tutorials, has just published her new sewing book. You can sneak a peek and with a little bit of luck even win a copy of the book if you enter her giveaway HERE - but hurry, the deadline is November 20th!

Bunny - the freehand machine embroidery tutorial

I' ve just listed my new Bella pouch. This time I've adorned it with an embroidered bunny and I wanted to put together a short tutorial - since I didn't have any water soluble film I used a transfer pencil to carry the drawing onto the fabric.

1

First I looked for a nice picture of a rabbit; I wanted a clear side view to make a simplified silhouette. I didn't want to just copy the image so I outlined the basic shape of the bunny in Photoshop, made its tail a bit more obvious and added another ear for more depth. I printed out the drawing and traced it on a piece of transparent paper - I could have also used a picture from a magazine or some other printed image and traced it directly from there.

2

Since I wanted my bunny to face right as it did on the original photo, I turned the transparent paper over to get the drawing's mirror image and drew over the lines again, this time with a transfer pencil, the kind that can be washed away later. I carefully placed the drawing on my linen canvas and ironed over it on medium heat. The transfer pencil left a visible enough trace - it was later completely covered with embroidery thread, otherwise I would have gently cold washed the canvas to get rid of the drawing underneath the embroidery.

3

I then fixed some tear-away stabilizer paper on the back of my drawing - I used tape but could have also used a more fancy self adhesive stabilizer. I adjusted my sewing machine to freehand embroidery (which means I dropped the feed dogs and installed a darning/embroidery presser foot) and slowly followed the drawing with my needle. I'm just starting to get the hang of this freehand embroidery so I like to go over the drawing several times to create a "hand drawn" look rather than trying to create a perfect silhouette. When I was done, I carefully pulled all the cut ends of threads from the front into the back with a don't-ask-me-how-it's-called-in-English tool and tied them firmly together so they don't unravel later. It is a boring task so I try to "draw" my embroidery in one piece (in this case in two, the eye was sewn separately).

In the end I tore the excess stabilizer paper away. Done!

4

Picture 4 shows how the bunny looked on both sides of the fabric...

...and this is the final result - the Bella zipper pouch.