Blues and twos

Blues and twos little shoes, these are the fairy shoes shown in issue 50 of the Stitches magazine. I've been wanting to make a pair of these since I saw them but never got round to it. When I was at the EG meeting on Saturday one of the members had made a fairy art doll and a couple of pairs of these shoes. It pushed me into making a pair so here they are my Bluebell Fairy shoes. I was surprised how quick and how much fun they were to make. Saturday I attended an EG workshop held by Linda Edwards who is our chairperson. The workshop was on silk rods and cocoons. Don't know about you but quite often the work I do at a workshop can change dramatically once I get home and have more time to think about it.

Linda has provided a kit comprising handdyed rods and cocoons plus she'd painted a small artists stretcher to match the silk bits. The hole at the back of the stretcher was quite small, about 2.5" square so it was awkward to manouvere the needle. Because of this we sewed the bits onto a background that was attached through the hole then the majority of the background was cut back.

I pulled apart some of the rods and created fan shapes which I then embroidered onto a background. The cocoons were covered in sequins in different shapes. Sheers and netting was added to the background and the whole piece embroidered before it was sewn into place.

When I'd finished I found that the 'slip' had slipped and it wasn't square on the stretcher. I had a lace butterfly and painted it the same as the other pieces using Inktense pencils and water in one of those brushes that hold water. Once it was dry I added beads to match those near it.