For my upcycle project I wanted to take an old pair of converse shoes and embroider them with flowers in addition to some other shapes. I had never embroidered before so this project was a bit outside of my skillset and took a bit of trial and error to get good at. It took a lot of practice to figure out the right stitching pattern to use and by messing around with it I ended up doing a variation of a chain stitch. This project took roughly 7 hours to do and required a lot of concentration to make sure everything was right. I had originally wanted to stitch other flowers onto the shoe but ended up running out of time and went for a quality-over-quantity approach.

To trace an outline for where the flower would be I used a white colored pencil and lightly drew on the canvas. This ended up being helpful seeing where to stitch instead of doing it freehand. The dots at the top of the shoe were supposed to be another sunflower but I might add that at some point later.

The inner parts of the flower petals were by far the most time-consuming and took about 30 minutes each however they got easier once I better understood the most efficient pattern to stitch with. I stabbed my fingers with the sewing needle one too many times so that wasn’t the best but I got better pretty quickly.

Inside of the shoe where the back of the stitching was.

3 Comments. Leave new

  • Rare sneakers
    May 27, 2024 5:38 am

    Flower design on shoes, well that’s a wonderful idea. There can be so much more one can do with their shoe design. Thank you very much. The above ideas are great.
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    Reply
  • Riley Dressel
    March 4, 2023 12:38 pm

    Bodhin,

    Your project looks amazing! I have long been a big fan of custom embroidery, especially when artists combine embroidery with classic brands. Your flower converse are amazingly done, and hand embroidery isn’t easy by any means. Being able to persevere over challenges and create a genuinely excellent product is amazing. Have you considered picking this art-style up as a hobby? I am a firm believer that you could hone your craft and monetize the product. Well done.

    Reply
  • Hi Bodhin,
    I think your project turned out great! The embroidering looks very professionally done, I would not have been able to tell that it’s your first time. The colors of the flowers really work well with the black canvas look of the shoes. Are you planning to add different types of flowers if you were to continue working on this project?

    Reply

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