It's Cosy Toes week at Twig and Tale!



As part of the inspiration team, I opted to sew up some wool wayfarers for my daughter. The wayfarers were one of 3 patterns that formed my first ever purchase from Twig and Tale. I've made a good few pairs of these from baby size, up to the biggest youth size 4.



I already knew that this pattern was too wide for my skinny girl, so I made the sole piece foot shaped, which took some of the width of the arch section of the foot. I measured her up, and she's into youth size 1, so only a few more to go before she's out of the kids sizes!



Once I'd shaped the sole to be more foot shaped, with a distinct left and right, I made up a trial shoe in some very scrap fabric, and realised I need to shave off some width from the toe section too. With a bit of trial and error, and a bit of measuring edges, I came up with a slimmer footed pattern for her.



I envisioned making some cute, warm, soft, embroidered slippers, and set about looking for embroidery patterns. I found a sweet book in Hobbycraft with many flower embroidery templates, and along with their bumper bag of cotton embroidery floss I set about sewing in some flowers for each slipper on the toe piece.



In my embroidery fuelled obsession, I ended up down an instagram rabbit hole of embroidery videos and pictures, and amongst them was Drop the Weasel. A page I already followed of facebook, with an amazingly well timed new pattern for an autumn wreath. I dropped a message over asking if she needed testers to try out her new design, and to my delight, got sent the pattern soon after.



By this point though, I'd already sewn the shoe together, as far as toe, elastic and heels. It made for challenging embroidery, and it took my a good while, but I managed two small sections of the hoop design on each heel piece. I used a thick felt for the lining sole, and pigskin for the outer sole, so it's non-slip and hardwearing.



She loved them, said they were super soft and squishy on her feet, but that the elastic pulled too tight, and pushed her toes uncomfortably into the ends. I felt super devastated that all those hours of work were wasted. But fear not, I unpicked a small section of each slipper, and snipped the elastic (photographed before I snipped the elastic). Now the backs are entirely not elasticated, but she can wear them comfortably which is good. They haven't got baggy yet, and around the house they stay on her feet.



I'd like to say a big thank you to Lizzie at Drop the Weasel for so kindly sending me her Autumn Wreath design so that I could sew it up onto these little slippers. And thank you Lisa at Twig and Tale for the beginners embroidery course that I followed, which was the inspiration and motivation I needed to pursue hand embroidery!



Did you know you can follow me on Instagram and I'd love for you to give me a like on Facebook.

*Disclaimer: Some of the links in the post are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission (the price stays the same for you) which will help me in the future to buy more patterns to share them with you!*