Sewing in the sun.
My friend Anne in Blandford is a very productive sewer. She makes beautiful clothes. Her website is sewmadeup.co.uk if you would like to see her work, she is also a photographer so the images are also stunning! So she showed me a fab book she had full of projects and we set about making some slippers from off cuts she had in the house, mine match her bathroom blind. I am completely committed to frugal making with little waste. Using up what is around or what is not wanted anymore really excites me.
It was a beautiful day so we decided to hand sew everything enabling us to sit in the sunny garden. It’s been a long time since I did a completely hand sewn project so that was another challenge for me to see how long it would take. We chose fabric, cut out four pieces of each shape and decided to use some curtain wading Anne had spare for extra padding under foot. We used three pieces for a good amount of cushioning and I tacked them together so they wouldn’t slip around inside the base. The structure seemed quite floppy to us so we did succumb to buying a small piece of heavy duty iron on stuff to strengthen the base.
At this stage I decided to embellish the top piece with some contrasting coloured running stitch to jazz it up a bit and added some text from the edge of the original fabric as an interesting detail. This obviously adds quite a bit of time to the project but I think was worth it! This way you end up with an entirely individual product.
Then it was just a case of folding neatly and sewing. The top pieces could be sewn right sides together and then turned out and pressed. The sole needed to be very carefully folded and pinned to make sure there weren’t any lumps to make them uncomfortable to wear. Once the top and bottom were stitched then each one could be stitched together. As they say in Yorkshire ‘I wu reet chuffed’ with the outcome. I think everyone may be getting slippers for christmas…
