After spending so much time making this dress, I was feeling as though the dress needed some extra accessories. I was also pondering my shoe choice for the debut wearing of the dress and decided that my new heels from American Duchess would be the obvious choice. Those shoes came with their own matching shoe clips (a leather heart) which had me thinking about shoe clips . . .
I also had some leftover fabric, although not enough to make another garment. And it's always better to do something with the scraps instead of folding the remnant bits up and putting them away. Years ago, I remember seeing photos of a vintage dress (possibly on Xtabay) that had self fabric appliquéd pieces along the neckline. The detail stuck with me, and I remembered the idea while trying to figure out what to do with the leftover floral motifs that I was working with.
I knew that I would have to finish the edges of individual flower motifs in some way, so I tried a couple of things before settling on cutting a large seam allowance, backing that piece of fabric with a second piece of fabric, stuffing a bit of leftover cotton batting inside, and then using a zig zag stitch to "finish" the edge of each individual flower.
After the stitching was complete, I used Fray Check to seal any raw edges, let that dry, and then trimmed close to the stitching. That left me with a bunch of little flowers. I played around with them for a bit before deciding that I also needed some greenery to make things look right, so I did the same thing with a few of the ivy motifs.
Those finished motifs were paired together and applied to the shoe clips and some hair combs that I broke into smaller sized combs. Felt was added to the top of the combs so that I could stitch the floral bits to the comb.
And two of the groups of flowers were applied to some blank shoe clips (also with the help of a small piece of felt).
I am rather pleased with how this project turned out.
Shoe clips are accessories that are often overlooked, but add a bit of whimsy to an outfit. I am going to have to remember that for future projects!
0 comments:
Post a Comment