Dearest Hive and Needleworking Friends!
Here are my shoes - ALMOST COMPLETE-ISSIMI - do you love them yet?? They really did go through an ugly phase, eh, and the last post that I wrote about them expressed how rather flat I was feeling at that point… sensing that the finishing was going to be too steep a learning curve. But the enthusiasm that sharing with Needlework Monday community returned to me was immense – I rode it onwards quite almost-effortlessly!
Apart from a glitch/ wrong-sewing of the tongue in, the ongoing phase was really straightforward: making button attachments and slits in the side and completing the ‘buttonhole’ tabs… one thing followed the other relatively nicely and smartly – each step was obvious, and the shoes appeared to take much-more-beautiful shape, all of a sudden.
working on the street below my house, in blazing sunshine and lovely heat!
They went from being lumpy brown foot bags, to being a lovely shapely shoe, as the buttons and straps met each other and pulled the shoe into place.
cutting the loops from the edge of the old leather skirt front
Then I even got to wear them!! Oh my! What divine foot caressing! Lots of movement possibilities! A second skin for connecting me to the Earth whilst protecting my soles from puncturing or getting super dirty!
amusing cat interlude: Betty loves the sun, and was enjoying laying next to me as I sewed merrily away!
It should be the simplest and most natural thing in one’s life, to clothe one’s feet (particularly inside the home), and yet – who does this? And why not? E.g. As I mentioned in the other blog, it was an early passion of mine to make a covering for my foot: I was inspired by shoes that I saw around me, and I wanted to MAKE MY OWN, from nature – and I acted on the urge... and made them…. Then got put off from going further, by bullying.
Something very blessed that I’ve learned in my 50 + years of being a creative human is that our first feeling for what we’re most passionate about, is usually Right. And, even if we don’t keep on that particular path of our first passion, we can ALWAYS come back to it, and pick it up and play with it again. This is one of the beautiful creative facts of life: our passions, our loves, our favourite occupations, will be there always – THOUGH the sooner we pick them up, the more mastery of them we can gain in our finite lifetime!
Once I made this shaping of the shoes, I began taking out other old (pre-made) shoes and thinking on how to take them apart, make them fit better, add things to them and take things away. I was enthused and excited by the enormously happy feeling of completing this project - that had been at least 4 decades in embryo! – and this was a great tonic to my having been stuck in the middle of the creation, losing energy.
the final, smaller work-tray, which is much easier to navigate, as I embark on the final stage of the shoe finishing
And I even tested out a quick pad about my house one evening in these new magical slipper-shoes, marvelling in their softness and comfort!! It is a profound act of self-care and empowerment, crafting these beautiful, silly, funky, wild, primitive, flexible super-shoes: I highly recommend it to anyone who has harboured a passion like this and never acted on it; it is never too late!
Sunday market coffee, charging up my mobile phone with a mini solar panel, and putting some edging stitching on the shoes
Okay: wish me luck now in actually completing them! I started the final-final phase, which involves going over all the brown stitching at the edges of the shoes, and I still have to add a tongue to each one. It might take a whole other week to get the the kind of final stage that I will finally accept as ‘finished’, but it feels close, hehe!
cutting the edges of the shoes to neaten them up - having taken out the basting stitches which was holding the three sole layers together
Much, much love to all in the needlework community – as ever your support is invaluable!
www.claregaiasophia.com
