Making My Own Shoes Part 1

Did you get a chance to visit Pameran Poskad last week? I just managed to visit on the last day and am very grateful for those of you who adopted three of my works. If you are keen to give my work a new home, do drop me a message! The items that remain are listed here.

Update - if you would like to see the final product, click here.  The repaired shoes will come later.

One of my postcards is inspired by kintsugi. I have an obsession with kintsugi. You might remember my happy pants upcycled from my husband's shirt. It's happy because I patched it with colourful scraps and stitched it with kintsugi-inspired free motion embroidery.  But I am taking inspiration from this postcard to make my own pair of shoes under the instruction of shoe maker, Lisa Teng of Lisa Teng Studios. Why shoes?

My Shoes Are Falling Apart

I bought a pair of shoes online. They looked really nice and they had received lovely reviews, not least because their goal was to feed hungry children around the world. After 3 months, they started to tear along the edges, and it was the first time I had experienced this. I consulted Lisa and she suggested that I remove the leather uppers from the sole and visit her workspace for a mending session.

I will keep you all updated on what's going to happen to the uppers but it's such a shame to throw them away. I'm looking forward to sharing with you what my "new" pair of shoes will look like after the session this Thursday.

Inspired by Kintsugi

Needing to mend my shoes also got me wondering how shoes are made. Have you ever thought about it? Lisa said I should start with espadrilles. I wonder how long they will take to make. I decided to draw inspiration from my favourite theme, mending with kintsugi.  I took my scraps of naturally dyed fabric from my experiments   - hey, it's upcycling - and sewed them together on calico.  What's next? Stay tuned for Part 2!

Here I am aligning all my little bits of naturally dyed fabric scraps onto the pattern.

Note: This post is not sponsored.