Beaded Moccasins - Work in Progress

I have always loved moccasins. In the 80's I made them for my kids, husband and my brother. I kept putting off making a pair for myself. In the meantime, the place in town where you could purchase the hide, fur for trim and leather thread etc closed it's doors. ( A good thing,because it was an old stinky ramshackle place with horror stories of what lived in it!) I can't believe I went in there and picked through the hide. Anyway, I procrastinated and never got the moccasins made for myself.

You can see the beads make it so much brighter on the pattern.

In December I was lucky and received a beautiful moccasin kit from a friend of mine who has the Ebay store "Fabric Fotos"

Char is a registered member of the Choctaw Nation and has the most wonderful things in her store.

I haven't made this style of moccasin before and can't wait to see how it turns out.

This is the start of my work in progress in making my moccasins. Althought they would be pretty with just the printed pattern, I've decided I'm going to brush up my beading skills and bead the entire pattern. Thank you Char for giving me the tips you did yesterday! It's going so much smoother now that I'm not going right through the hide. I realized today that these are wonderfully soft deer hide and the ones I made years ago were from cow hide. Not the same at all. The deerhide is so much superior.

The photos are what I accomplished in 3 days LOL. I am sure as I get more comfortable with it that I'll get faster. Stay tuned. I'll post more photos over the next few weeks so you can see how they turn out.