Monday, February 04, 2008

wool sweater slippers

Would you like a warm pair of felted wool slippers? Let me show you how to make some real fast. Some of the things you will need: felted sweater, old jeans, embroirdery floss, paper backed fusible webing, sewing machine and basic sewing things (like scissors, thread pins).
Start with an old wool sweater. Run it through a hot wash then a hot dryer a couple of times to get it good and felted. Turn sweater inside out and stick your foot into the sleeve with the cuff around your ankle.
Trace the outline of your foot with a pencil, marker, chalk or whatever you have that will show up on wool. I used a chalk pencil. Then pin on both sides of the lines to hold everything in place.
Cut the sleeve off of the body of the sweater and sew along the line you just drew.
Trim close to the sewn line with pinking sheers.
Turn right side out and repeat all these steps with the other foot in the other sleeve.
So now you have two sock/slippers and you could stop right there and get your feet warm. But let's keep going and make these a little more durable. Take a sheet of paper backed fusible web and trace your feet. Cut these out roughly and iron to the wrong side of some old jeans.
Cut out along the lines and peel the paper off very carefully. Put the gluey/webby side of the denim feet against the bottom of the wool socks. Spray with some water and press with a hot iron.
Now, the glue of the fusible web is not going to stick so hard to the wool, so get out some embroidery floss and buttonhole stitch all the way around denim.
Boom! You're done.

5 comments:

Dawn said...

This is sooooo nifty! I can see slippers in every color for everyone in my family. Great idea, Jenna!

Lisa Boyer said...

What a great idea!!!! They look so cozy!

Anonymous said...

what a great way to use materials on hand!!!

I think today I might cut up an old sweater!!!!!!

Anonymous said...

Beautiful. Cant wait to see it finished. I dont know how you do it.

Koral Works said...

Thank you so much! awesome idea! Any idea how to make them non skid?