CraftWorks :: Looking back << Embroidery on shoes

It was a wrong decision, driven by an obsessive compulsive behavior of wanting to wash everything and this time, it was an urge to wash my favourite pair of canvas shoes, one that had never been washed for years.

The result of this decision was a pair of clean but stained canvas shoes, which no longer looked clean with the stains. When I first saw the stains, my heart was crushed that I decided to wash the pair of shoes again.

I couldn't understand why the stains appeared and no matter how much I scrubbed, the stains were still there! It then dawned on me that thick canvas has this behaviour. I have not researched on why that was but at that time, I couldn't really think much.

I left them for weeks, unsure what to do with them. I pretty much knocked my head several times, for making the decision to wash them, almost accepting that it was the end of the shoes. I looked at them sadly everyday, wondering, thinking, what to do or if there was anything that could be done.

Then, it came a day, I had a light bulb moment. I dug out my book of embroidery stitches and started flipping the pages.

I have never been a fan of embroidery because of the few times I tried, my embroidery looked quite bad. It needed patience and finesse which I didn't quite have. The few embroidery I did, they looked awful, almost like rough sketches instead of smooth lines all around.

For the sake of this pair of shoes, I would attempt embroidery again. I thought that I could try embroidery on the stains to hide them. I didn't know if it would work then but I thought there was nothing much to lose because I was quite sure that I would not be wearing the shoes any time soon or maybe never again.

I read through the pages to figure out the type of stitches that would work. I tried to remember what I did wrong the last time when I did embroidery and what made them look the way they did.

I took the clean pair of shoes, and tried to think methodologically. I needed to conceptualize my idea first, plan my work isntead of jumping straight into it. I placed them on a piece of paper and started drawing the outline, well, just the first half of the shoes.

I had in mind what I wanted to do which was colourful flowers, just to give it some funkiness and thought it would look kind of cute. Whether or not it would turn out the way I envisioned, that was something I wasn't sure of.

At this point, I was quite excited. I started drawing on my pair of shoes with pencil. The petals, stems, leaves and soil should hide the stains. As I drew, I added more little flowers and grass, to cover the stained parts. At the end of it, I thought that there was quite a bit to embroider and I started to panic. Panicked but excited at the same time.

When I was satisfied with my little amateurish sketch, I took my crosstitch thread, choosing the colours I wanted. Slowly, I started the embroidery, following as closely as I could the outlines with stitches that I had learnt from the embroidery book that I had.

The flowers started to take shape and it was motivating to keep at it while I was in the mood. I went on and on until I got the outlines all stitched out.As I continued, I added fillers to the petals. I decided to change from colourful to shades of purple and pink. The book explained the stitches suitable for outline as well as for the petals, starting with lighter hues and moving towards darker hues.

Then, it was time for the grass, smaller flowers, stems and soil. The pattern took a slight alteration from the original idea as I moved along.

It was quite a tedious work but as the flowers started to form its shape and colour, I was driven to continue.

When the stains were getting camouflaged, my heart leaped with joy. The flowers were turning out pretty alright and the colours seemed to work too.

I was very happy with this work, the main reason being that I managed to save my pair of shoes and I successfully embroidered flowers that looked quite decent I thought :)

All photos were taken by me with my mobile phone.