Warm Woolly Slippers

I LOVE slippers.  Since I work from home, they are on my feet ALL day.  I was so sad when my last year’s slippers my daughter knit me got a hole in them.  I thought about asking her to make me another pair but she is SO busy.  I decided to take the matter in my own hands and make some….NO I didn’t learn to knit.  I just sewed!

I bought a bag of old knit sweaters at the local thrift store for $3.  I put the sweaters through the washer and drier to felt them and read up on this tutorial.   Of course I can’t do things like the directions say so I loosely followed those instructions but made up some of my own.

Getting the pattern right was the hardest.  I followed the ideas on the other tutorial to make the pattern pieces….then I started with some of my own ideas.

I used two different sweaters…a yellow vest and a green sweater…that’s how I got two different colors.  I cut out four of the bottom pieces and four of the top pieces.  We live in an old farm house and wanted warm feet.  I took the two sole pieces and sewed around the edge making a thicker sole.  I used my walking foot on my sewing machine to get the layers to feed through evenly.

Then I pinned the top piece on and sewed it in place.  I tried on the slipper to test the size.

I overlapped the pieces at the heal and tacked them in place.

Then I cut a piece of sweater that was 1.5 inches wide and as big around as the sweater.  I pinned it to the bottom of the slipper and sewed it in place.

I flipped the slipper over and got this.

I cut the ribbing off the bottom of the sweater, cut it in half and pinned it to the slipper as shown.  Then I sewed it in place.

Now comes some hand stitching….
Roll the ribbing over and hand stitch in place.

Then roll the bottom edge over to cover the seam and hand stitch in place.

To make a pair of slippers you’ll have to do this twice one for each foot….
I loved my slippers but they were just a bit snug and I wanted a bit more cushioning in the bottom.

SO…I repeated the whole process…
This time I used a burgundy sweater.  I made them about a quarter inch bigger all the way around and added TWO layers of fleece in the sole.  To do that, cut the fleece about .25 inches smaller than the sweater soles.  Sandwich the the fleece between the sweater soles, then sew around the edge of the soles….I like both pair.

I’ve been wearing the burgnady ones more…it’s been COLD here and they are just enough warmer with those TWO layers of fleece added to the sole.

I had SO much fun making these….I LOVE knitted things and don’t want another hobby so this was perfect for me.  I am watching the thrift stores for more wool sweaters…I want to make my kiddos some mittens.  They are constantly steeling my wool mittens that I made from a sweater.

My hubby was laughing at me the WHOLE time….I kept saying how much I loved up my slippers….he of course thinks I am nuts.  He’s wondering why I don’t just go to town and buy some.