Peranakan Shoe Beading Course (Kasut Manek)

These are the materials provided by the trainer. A porcelain saucer for holding the beads, a small pair of foldable scissors, a pack of tiny needles for beading, two huge needles for breaking wrongly placed beads, and beading thread.

The canvas provided by the instructor is harder than regular cross stitch cloth. This is glued to a piece of backing cloth made of cotton which is attached tightly to a frame. We were also given some blue colored practice beads.

There were a few templates for us us to choose from, depending on our gender (yes, males wear beaded shoes too, but sewn by a woman of course), the size of our feet and the type of shoe we wanted (open or close-toed). The chosen template has to be cut out and traced onto the canvas before beading can commence.

I chose for my shoe to be close-toed. Note that if you choose the close-toe option, you would have a larger background area to bead.

The colors were chosen for me by the trainer, and this is how it looks like with the first two flowers completed. Somehow I feel that the colors look like they'd be more suitable for a male than a female. It also bugs me endlessly how the beads look like lego pieces.

You can take a look at my progress here, with the background partially done.