I haven’t posted in… ever so long. I’m still alive! Just been doing stuffs. Can you believe it’s nearly Christmas already!?
So I’ve decided to hand-make some Christmas gifts this year. I’m not sure why, since I hate hand sewing and that’s what these gifts call for. Ah well!
One of the things I’ve decided to make is homemade slippers. Houseshoes, really. I started to make a pair a couple years back, never finished them. So I think it’s time to finish the set. These are relatively easy to make, and inexpensive too! Depending on what you have around the house, they’ll cost you about $0 to $10 per pair and they’ll be unique.
These instructions will make an approximately size 9 womans’ bootie. Depending on cut and size, you may need slightly more or less materials.
What you’ll need:
- 1 large bath towel. Nobody will see this fabric, so it can be stained and/or slightly worn – as long as it’s clean and still fluffy. A beach towel can be used, but this won’t be as fluffy. If you haven’t got a towel you can use, substitute a layer of fleece or a double thickness of thick t-shirt material. Won’t be quite the same, but should work okay.
- 1 yard of ‘fashion’ fabric. Aside from the fact that this is what people will see, it really doesn’t matter what kind of fabric you choose.
- 1 yard of fleece. Walgreen’s (and some dollar) stores have fleecy 30″ x 30″ baby blankets for $1. This should be plenty. Walgreen’s also has fleece throw blankets for sale for $4. (One of these should make several pairs of houseshoes, should you be so inclined.) You could also use a thick t-shirt material or another towel. The wearer will see this fabric, so pick something nice!
- 1 roll of duct tape and anti-skid bathtub stickers (if you intend to make the houseshoes suitable for outdoor use, such as fetching the paper) or a non-skid fabric (if they will be for indoor use only).
- scotch tape, pen/pencil, paper (copier paper will work fine), scissors, needle, thread
- Optional: 1 yard of 1 to 2 inch wide ribbon that matches your fashion fabric or a 1 yard strip of 2 to 4 inch wide fabric different from above.
- Also optional: If the recipient of the gift is a different shoe size than you, you may wish to get or reference a pair of shoe inserts that have the sizes printed on them. But since these aren’t meant to be fitted shoes, making a “size 8″ for someone who wears size 7 should be fine – the reverse is obviously not true, however.
Unfortunately, I’ve not got any pictures so you’ll have to make do with my explanations.
Preparation: If you are going to use ribbon, you can skip this step. Take the strip of fabric and place it wrong side up so it lays vertically to you. Like a | line. Fold the left side in 1/4th of the way, to the middle, and then fold the right side in to the middle as well. Now, fold the whole thing in half. You may wish to iron the fabric now so it’ll keep its shape. Otherwise, you may have to re-fold later.
If these are to be for “occasional” outdoor use, or you simply don’t want them automatically soaking up spilled coffee, start by making a piece of duct tape cloth that is approximately 18″ square. Many colors of duct tape are available, but I would suggest black if you can get it. Once this is done, or if the houseshoes are for indoor-use only, you can start work on the actual houseshoes.
- Place your larger (one foot is nearly always just a little bit longer than the other) foot on a sheet of paper. If your foot is longer than the paper, you can use two sheets securely taped together. Trace LOOSELY around your foot. If you trace closely, you’ll end up with uncomfortably tight houseshoes. Of course, you may want tighter houseshoes if the recipient has smaller feet. Either way, the resulting shape should be more oval than exactly foot shaped. Add approximately 1/4″ inch to all sides of this shape to make it less foot shaped and to give slightly more ‘wiggle room’. Cut it out along this new line. This will be the pattern for sole pieces.
- Sitting crosslegged on the floor, place your foot sideways on a second sheet of paper. Trace VERY loosely around your foot. It should look something like an L shaped sock, with the top being approximately where you want the houseshoe tops to be. This is the start of our upper pattern.
- Taking this new pattern, make the bottom of the foot flat. Add an additional 1 inch to the toe, making the toe square on the bottom and the new toe line straight instead of curved. This straight line should be approximately 1.5″ to 2″. Square off the heel as you did the toe, adding an additional inch to the back length. Make the top of the houseshoe a nice, flat, line.
- Starting at the top of the new toe line, draw a graceful curving line towards the front of the ankle line. It should roughly, within an inch or two, follow the outline of the foot you traced. The result should more or less resemble a larger size houseshoe with square toes. The resulting pattern should be about 2 or 3 inches longer than the sole pattern. Cut this out from the paper now.
- Compare the sole pattern to the upper pattern by pretending to fit them together. Does the upper seem to fit to approximately half of the sole? If so, nothing else is needed. If it’s just a little bigger, that’s fine. Is the upper way too big? Trim off a little of the toe or heel, but not too much. Keep the edges straight and square. If the upper is just a little bit too small, you can tape an addition to the toe or heel. Otherwise, you’ll have to trace a new, longer, version on a new piece of paper and completely redo the curving line.
- You can skip this step if you want, but it means you’ll have to sew at least one extra seam as well as cut out two uppers for each houseshoe. Once you’ve got the upper good, cut out another upper from another piece of paper. Tape them together along the back heel line with as little overlap as possible. Place your foot on the sole pattern and try to roughly fit the upper pattern to it (helps if you’re sitting on the ground). Does the ankle opening seem wide enough to get your foot in and out? If not, you can cut the pattern along the tape seam and add in a strip of paper to make it wide enough. Now check the toe. Trim if there is excessive overlap, or add a little if required. Otherwise, you can leave this for now.
- Now you can start cutting out the fabric. Cut two soles for the inner fleece layer, cut two soles for the middle layer (4 if you’re substituting thick t-shirt material) and two soles from either the duct tape cloth from earlier or your non-skid cloth. For the uppers, cut two fleeces layers, two middle layers and two for the outermost layer. Unless your sole shape is a completely generic oval, you may want to flip the sole pattern over to make both left and right soles and keep track of which is which (doesn’t matter if you’re using a double-sided fabric).
- Starting with the left soles, place the middle and outer layers WRONG sides together. You can pin them, but I would suggest taking a couple of basting stitches instead. Losing a pin in this project accidentally could be very bad! Do the same with your left upper pieces, wrong sides together and basting.
- Align the heel of the sole with the middle of the upper piece, right sides together, and start sewing towards the toe. You will be sewing through four layers of potentially thicker fabric, so this may take awhile. Do not sew all the way to the end. Leave the last 2 inches, at least, undone. Go back to the heel and start sewing the other side towards the toe.
- Once you’ve got the second side sewn, now is the time to check for any leftover fabric at the toes. If they’re both going to overlap greatly, now is the time to trim BOTH sides evenly to make them shorter. Slight overlap is fine, this is seam allowance. When the toes are the right length, sew the toe ends together. just the straight edge.
- Go back and finish sewing the uppers to the sole.
- Now you can start stitching the tops of the curving line together. Start from the toes and work back.
- When you get to the ankle, you’re finished (for now) with this houseshoe. Go ahead and turn it right-side out.
- Go ahead and do the other houseshoe the other way.
- Two parts down, you’re about half done! Place the lining material right-sides together and sew each one as you did for the outer parts above. Do NOT turn them right side out when finished.
- When you’re done with the lining, slip the left liner into the left houseshoe and the right liner into the right house shoe.
- Take a couple of stitches, at the toe, sides and heel of each house shoe, to tack the liner to the outer part.
- Cut a piece of ribbon or the fabric strip from earlier so it is 1 inch longer than the house shoe’s ankle is around. Fold the ribbon in half or slightly unfold the fabric strip to go over the ankle of the house shoe and then tack the end down. For the left shoe, do this on the right side. For the right shoe, do this on the left side.
- Using whatever stitch you think looks best, start tacking one side of the ribbon or fabric strip to the outside of the houseshoe and the other side to the inside. The point of this is to hide the rough edges of the three layers of houseshoe. When you get near the end of your ribbon, tuck the rough edge under, so that it still overlaps the first end, and keep sewing.
- Yay! You’ve completed a bootie! Now, go do the same to the other one.
- Finished pair! Give as gifts or wear them yourself.
Couple of ideas:
Use lighter weight fabric to make yourself a pair of summer moccasins. Using the duct-tape sole, you should be able to superglue an old pair of your sandals to the bottom to make them more suitable for every day wear. Cut off the sandal straps first, of course.
Use faux suede and woolly fleece to make something that resembles certain styles of “UGG” shoes. The ‘Bipster’ comes to mind, but you could possibly think of other variations.
It’s possible to skip the ribbon step by leaving part of the liner sole unsewn and then sew the house shoe as if it were a stuffed animal. I leave that part as an exercise for your imagination. Mostly because I can’t take pictures of the process at the moment.
So, there you go! House shoes for (almost) free and a little bit of time. If you do it properly, they’ll be cuter than what you could buy in the store, too.
