Hand Embroidered Espadrilles

It was my little sister’s birthday this week just gone. With summer on its way… in theory at least, I decided to embellish a pair of espadrilles as a birthday gift for her.

They can be a little fiddly to embroider onto as there’s not a lot of room in the toes of the shoes in which to work. Luckily I found a top tip in my Folk Art Needlecraft book which suggested starting by embroidering a row of stitches across the toe opening; this gave me a point at which to tie off my threads rather than getting myself in a muddle beneath the fabric at the tip of the shoe.

Having established some stitches across the opening I found the centre of the front of the shoe and stitched an eight pointed star. From this starting point I made up the pattern as I went along adding rings of stitches in alternating purple shades. I even added a splash of metallic purple stitches to give the shoes some pizzazz.

If you’re not comfortable making up your pattern as you go along you could buy some espadrilles in a lighter colour which would allow you to draw on a design with a soluble pen or some chalk.

It took me a while to get my head in the right space to embroider these shoes. My preference is usually for small tight split stitches usingh single strands of floss, but without the room to manoeuvre beneath the fabric I had to find a chunkier solution using running stitches and back stitches for the most part.

There’s no excuse really for not rocking your socks off with a pair of hand embellished espadrilles this summer.