"Turning Leaf" Shoe

All the fabrics I used for this shoe are designed by Jane Sassaman.
Jane's polka dotted fabrics are a big favorite of mine. The shoe is one piece of the blue/green one. I fussy-cut leaves that are from a couple of different fabrics. They were dissected to fit the curves and fill the spaces of the shoe.

The labels for the boxes are free-motion embroidery. I wrote out the words on tracing paper just the way I wanted them to appear. I then sprayed a temporary adhesive to the "right" side of the paper.
I adhered the paper to the wrong side of a heavy satin fabric with the "wrong" side of the writing face up. A heavy thread was wound on the bobbin and a fine one was threaded on top through the needle. I free-motion stitched over the written words.
The stitching perforates the paper making it easy to tear away when the embroidery is complete.

I devised this method through much experimenting. Any style of writing can easily be reproduced. The ease of stitching with the heavy thread in the bobbin as apposed to its being the top thread makes very legible letters.

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