Friday 25 July 2008

A Gift For Your Feet


Well, really my friend's feet. She is coming up to visit this weekend and it happened to be her birthday the other day, which I purposefully neglected. I suppose I should have at least called her . . . Oh well, too late now and she'll be here tomorrow - yay!!! It is really a wonderful time when close friends come to stay. Even when it is only for a few minutes it brightens up hours and days either side of the visit! This time I am lucky and she's here for a whole day and a night with her fantastic family in tow. The kids can play and we can just visit. Lovely.

The blue reminds me of her somehow. Or maybe it's the swirling pattern in the fabric. I think it's because there are always traces of the ocean and blue sky in my head when I think of her. She is an island girl by birth and we met on an island nation. Surrounded by blue sea and canopied by blue sky, our families became fast friends. I'm not sure, all I know is that these have been hers since they began. I stitched the quilting in a swirling pattern that reminded me of New Zealand koru, my favourite Maori symbol. Koru is the Maori name for a new unfurling fern frond, which we call a fiddlehead. It symbolizes new life, growth, strength and peace. I think that it's perfect for the twice-transplanted Scottish girl that I met in New Zealand 10 years ago.

And Gawdess, I did not "just whip these ones up". Grin. You will be relieved to know that these have been languishing in my UFO pile for at least a year, along with another terribly cute pair in pink which are destined for my own feet. As usual I could not bring myself to follow the pattern properly, making a few tweaks here and there, but they are quite simple to make and they would be fast if you could make up your mind as to how you are going to pad the sole and make them not be too slippy. I didn't even screw up the binding as I usually do, thanks to lots and lots of steam ironing.


After lots of test stomping, I decided to use up some yucky polar fleece and some totally synthetic batting I had laying around for the sole padding - one layer of fleece and two of batting. To make the sole grippy, I used fabric with little rubber dots all over, the kind you find on the bottom of infant sleepers, rather than the vinyl called for in the pattern. I found it much easier to make it slide along the sewing machine platform if it had tissue paper under it. When I sewed it as the layer facing up, I used a teflon foot.


3 comments:

Gawdess said...

they are beautiful both on the surface and for the meaning that you bring to them!
and by "whip up" I am just in wonder of how you take beauty and make it concrete, it is wonderful :)!
a lovely gift and hope you have a great visit!

StrawberryCreek said...

gawdess, you do the same thing with your camera and your poetry everyday. thanks for having it out there for all of us to see

Anonymous said...

I am the feet and the friend who received this treasure. I so love and appreciate the thoughts, words and gift. Never even looked at a blog spot before this this is a double gift my friend!

With love xxxxx