#needleworkmonday :: 🌈🎨 Saving my stained canvas shoes 👟

Happy #NeedleWorkMonday everyone!!

It is the first Monday in 2019! Here's to more amazing needlework projects through the year! 🥂

One of my goals this new year 2019 is to complete projects that I have started and abandoned over the past year(s) 😅. You may remember my unhappy shoes from a couple of months back.

I figured my shoes have been unhappy long enough (lying around, ignored and abandoned 😢 by me 😂) and it was time to get down to it and do something about them.

In my first post, some of you have given me very nice ideas and @cryptocariad even went on to draw a nice pattern diagram which I set my mind this week to go ahead and give it a try.

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Conceptualizing the idea

The first thing I did was to sketch the idea (like @cryptocariad's suggestion) and see how it would look like.

I traced the outline of my shoes onto a sketchbook and tried to water pencil colour them (note to self: go get some watercolours for better coverage😅)

I decided to go with one main flower on each shoe and my initial idea was to have colourful petals, following the embroidery book that I shared before:

In the book, there was a page on Stem Stitch and it intrigued me on how a curved line can be nicely stitched by making sure we are consistent with how the needle is pulled through along the line as we stitch. Then, there was also a page on working with petals and I love how we can mix colours to create a nice gradient on the petals. Finally, there was also a Bullion Stitch / Knot to create nice coiled buds and petals.

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Transferring the idea to reality

Then, it was time to transfer the idea onto my hopefully-soon-to-be-happy-shoes. I used a 2B pencil. At first, I drew 4 petals, thinking that it should take less work but felt like it was missing a petal. I redrew and adjusted the petals. So, 5 petals it is 🌺. The brown stains will naturally be the stems and soil.

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Preparing the thread

I used gradient coloured DMC cross stitch threads which has 6 strands in each skein. I split the 6 strands to 3 strands for the embroidery and the way I split the strands was using one hand to split while the other hand unwinds the strands.

I found that if we use all 6 strands for this size of a project, the embroidery will be too fat and 2 strands is too thin. 3 strands seems just nice.

Now, for the moment of truth, will this work or make the shoes look worse? 🤷🏻‍♀️

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The embroidery

First, I started with the outline of the petals. The gradient purple thread was at a lightest shade when I started stitching, so that became the outline. I started the stitch by inserting the needle into the center and ended up with the knot facing upwards. It kind of gave an interesting bushy effect to the center of the flower.

And I absolutely love the stem stitch. It really curves very nicely as long as you maintain consistency with the direction of your needle inserts as you move along the line.

Then, I moved on to adding the lighter colour to the upper side of the petals. You will notice that I ended up not doing multi coloured petals because the purplish hues look quite pretty as it is and is simpler too, compared to changing to different coloured strands of thread for each petal. Plus, I love purple 😍.

Next, I changed to a darker gradient strands of thread and stitched the middle center parts of the petals.

Once the petals are almost formed, I changed to a yellow gradient thread to stitch the centers of the petals.

With the same yellow thread, I added little buds with the bullion knots.

Then, I stitched the soil and main flower stem with brown thread.

Lastly, I added green stems for the little yellow buds.

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The result

Once I was done with the first shoe, I moved on to the 2nd shoe 😊.

All in all, it took me about 7 hours to complete this work. The best part about the shoes is that the stitches can be hidden within the fabric layers of the shoe, you just need to stitch and sew in between the layers of fabric.

👟🌷👟☘👟🌷👟