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Christmas Shoes

Because I left for India the day after Christmas, I wanted to do something special for my beloved, who was justifiably sad about not being able to come (and about having to take me to the airport at 2:30 a.m.).

I do nothing by halves, so I thought I'd pull off a personal twelve days of Christmas for her. Super cute, almost enough days for me to come home again, and oh my god, past me, did you not realize how many presents that is, holy MACKEREL.

Anyway, I managed, with some judicious thrift shopping for a few items, and some extremely clever crafting in the few hours a week I had to work with. We'd picked up four little shoe models from a local antique shop with a vague idea of turning them into studio decoration of some kind.


A small red velvet shoe model on a grey tufted couch. The shoe has gold braid trim around the base and opening, and a red bow, and the opening is filled with light grey fabric crisscrossed by green floss with red knots at the intersections. A few pins are stuck into the cushion.
Is it not adorable?!?
Obviously, I went the decorative pincushion route.

A small gold shoe model on a red cushion set on a grey tufted couch. The shoe has a decoration of gold beads at the center front, and the opening is filled with olive green fabric with an embroidered head of lilac blossoms in shades of purple. A few pins are stuck into the cushion.
Staging is my passion.

Twice. In my defense, it's the perfect use for these little shoes, and I was having fun.

A small gold shoe model, black pen, tiny piece of tissue paper cut into a shoe-sole-shape, bigger piece of tissue paper with another shoe sole traced on it in purple, and a deconstructed laptop charger on a glass-topped coffee table.
Never mind the electrical jury-rigging in the background.

I squished tissue paper into the shoe until it was flattish, traced around with a felt-tip marker (to avoid tearing the paper and marking up the shoe), pulled the paper out and cut the pattern, and then slid the piece into the shoe to check how it fit.

I don't seem to have taken any photos of the leather, but I then used the paper pattern to cut a wee piece of thin, sturdy leather for an insert, mainly to protect the points of pins from the hard inner surface of the shoe. The leather got squeezed inside, and then I moved on to the fabric cushions.

A small red velvet shoe model on a loose pile of blue and white tissue paper, with crowded bookshelves in the background along with a blue-and-white Santa figurine.
I don't have an elf on the shelf, but I do have a thrift store Santa.

It wasn't a scientific process; I just wrapped a bunch of fabric scraps in another scrap and folded the big piece around until everything was snugly wrapped and the fabric was fairly dense.

A white hand holding a frankly turdlike bundle of grey linen held roughly together with red floss, over a blue and white painted counter.
Taking the historical view of "if it can't be seen, it doesn't matter."

I already had a needle threaded with this red crochet cotton, so I used that to snug up the cover of the cushion, and kept stitching and stretching until most of the wrinkles had smoothed out.

A small embroidery hoop with fine, slubbed olive-green fabric stretched taut, held in front of a window with a small houseplant sitting in it.
Sheers are fun.

I also got to make use of one of the little scraps of silk leftover from my ostentatious bliaut as the base for the lilac-embroidered pincushion, which I'm deeply pleased with. The flowers are just four lazy daisy stitches each in a few shades of purple floss I had in my stash. I stitched the covering fabric to the cushion the same way I made the cushion, with a little more care to keep the design centered.

And then I stuck the cushions in the shoes and went on my way (to make and find nine further presents).

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