Fun Shoes!

I blogged, a while back on my series of shoe envy pieces...fun, cheaper than a pair of Jimmy Choo's and no worries about aching arches. 

Well shoe envy returns...this time in the form of a small commission.  I had some pieces hung at a local art show when a woman approached me with an idea:  her granddaughter, Janessa, had just purchased her first pair of honest-to-goodness-really-high-heels for a family wedding.  She wanted to surprise Janessa with a memento of that first step (literally) as an "adult."

It sounded like a fun challenge...

We started off with some photos from the wedding (helpful, but not enough detail)

The Wedding Shoes

And then we enlisted "Dad" to surreptitiously go to his daughter's closet (cell phone in hand) and capture a close-up...

Wedding Shoe Close-up...notice the netted cut-outs

Much better, but a little bit more complicated than the standard shoe envy piece...

Instead of 3 or 4 solid pieces of fabric mounted onto a 4"x4" background, this involved 7 pieces (6 are pictured below) with multiple cut-outs in some, and a couple of non-traditional materials...netting and a stretchy, sparkly fabric to be exact).   

Pattern for Shoe Envy Pieces

Once the pattern pieces were designed, the shoe came together more easily than I had anticipated: 
- trace the pattern pieces onto fusible
- apply the fusible to the fabrics and cut out the pieces
- iron the pieces onto the background lavender fabric - one of the Janessa's favorite colors (a stiletto definitely helped to ease the small pieces into place)
- stitch away (small zig-zag appliqué)
- match the multicolored sparkles on the original shoe by using a permanent marker (micron pen in green, red, and blue) on some of the fabric's silvery sparkles (you may be able to see the slight color variation on the close-up photos).

Heel Close-up

Toe Close-up

Put in a frame --- here's the completed project....

Janessa's First Heels

 I have to say that although I'm satisfied with the piece, the bigger pleasure was in having the chance to help grandmom and granddaughter celebrate a special coming-of-age moment.

Wishing Janessa and her family many more of these special events....

Cheers!

Debbie