DIY Shoes

I made shoes! I’ve had this kit from A Happy Stitch for over a year, but just now got a bit of sewing mojo. I’ve been pretty hooked on the news this week, so this was a great project to make while listening to our democracy fall apart — or maybe the start of putting it back together? We’ll see.

Anyway, I made shoes! I’ve made baby shoes in the past, which were freaking adorable, but it feels pretty badass to make a pair of shoes that I can wear. I did make a few tweaks to the instructions, as I always do. Read on if you want to get in the weeds.

The espadrille kit comes with soles, twine, needles, wax, much-needed finger protectors, and instructions. In addition to Melissa’s clear instructions in her I Got It kit, I also watched this video and decided not to sew the heel and toe fabric pieces together until the end. Then when I got to the end, I didn’t want to muck it all up with any messy hand stitching, so I used this GLUE. This method really helped get a good snug fit because I could try them on and adjust the pieces before I glued them together. My fabrics were a lightweight canvas and lightweight denim, so the glue was fine, but I can imagine it might be too stiff on thinner fabrics. We’ll see if they hold up! I got a little crazy with the glue and even attached some labels to the inside. I was planning to send these to quilt market, but with the unbelievable heat here in Atlanta, I want to wear them now.

The fabric is from my next collection, Paper, which will be in my shop this weekend. Here are the other colorways for this design.   Shops — you can order this collection wholesale in the U.S. from Seven Islands Fabric or in Europe from Nunoya.

New Fabric

Just finalized the colors for my next collection! Here are the strike-offs. This collection is again printed on Kokka’s linen/cotton lightweight canvas fabric and should be shipping at the end of the summer or early fall!

Design Evolution

I just submitted a few new textile designs and wanted to show you my latest process. For one of the designs, I started with a papercut that I made last year:

I burned the papercut onto a screen, printed panels and sewed limited-edition pouches and bags:

Then I recently digitized the design and started playing around with colors:

Then I put the pattern in repeat, removed some details, and added more color:

Most textile designers have a cache of past designs and projects that are reinvented. For each fabric collection that is printed, there are at least an equal number of discarded design ideas. When I’m working with a papercut, the work is inflexible which presents its own challenges and rewards, but then when I put the pattern into Illustrator, the variations are infinite.

I just bought some green ink and will be printing some of the above panels soon.