Tag: slippers

The monkey slippers are finished!

I added some felt soles, with a decorative blanket stitch to neatly finish off the edges. I hadn’t worked blanket stitch for approximately 28 years, but it was lovely to have a look through my Great Aunt’s sewing book from 1940, for a little refresher course. 🙂

I love these monkey slippers with a fiery passion, and I have managed to find a single fat quarter of the same fabric, but with the nuts/gourds in purple rather than brown. If I buy it, I can make one more pair of monkey slippers… or of course you can all have something different!

I’ve also finished my second pair of slippers – these are a slip-on mule style, made from skull and crossbones print fleece.

The uppers are made from two layers of fleece, with a layer of denim sandwiched in between for strength. The soles are made from a layer of fleece, then denim, then heavy buckram, and finally felt on the bottom. (This is what the soles look like.)

The monkey slippers have a layer of foam rubber in the sole, which makes them extremely squashy and comfortable to walk on. They feel a bit tight the first time you put them on, but after a couple of days the foam compacts down nicely. The mule slippers don’t have any foam in the soles at all, which is something I want to change about them. I think it would be nice if they were a bit softer. I also need to make some changes to the felt soles, to make them a little safer. They’re a bit slippery on laminate flooring – I’ve almost gone skating a couple of times!

If anybody would be interested in buying the skull slippers, they’re a size 6/39, and can be yours for the bargain prototype price of a fiver!

I’m not taking formal customer orders for slippers yet, but if you’d like to help me by testing out a slightly experimental pair (possibly involving you drawing around your feet), please drop me a comment, and we can work something out. 🙂

Today I have been mostly making monkey slippers!

I promised to make a pair of slippers for a friend, so I thought I’d better make a prototype for myself first, to figure a few things out. I had just enough monkey fabric left from my Superbuzzy order, so I couldn’t resist using it up.

I have plans to make some more, probably out of fleece, and a slip-on/mule style with some of my leftover fancy fabrics. This is all part of the Grand Shoe Plan, but I figured that slippers would be a good starting point.

This is how I made them…

Here you can see (almost) all of the necessary pieces. For the uppers, there’s the monkey fabric. For the lining I used some cream poly/cotton, which is fused to a piece of batting. (That’s the squashy stuff.) For the soles, there are two pieces of cream poly/cotton, each fused to heavy interfacing. Between them goes a piece of 1″ upholstery foam.

These are the upper pieces, sewn together and turned right sides out, and the sole pieces with the foam sandwiched between them.

The uppers and the soles pinned together. I learnt a few things at this stage:

• Press the uppers before you sew them on to the soles
• Don’t bother pinning and machine basting. Hand basting is actually quicker and easier for this.
• If you have a fine upholstery needle.

I also left out the elastic which was suggested for the back of the heel. The slippers do stay on without it, but I think I’ll be adding it in next time, to stop them from gaping.

Ta-daa! They look finished!

Until you turn them over…

I’ll be buying felt for the soles tomorrow! I might also add a bit of decorative top stitching around the uppers.

And there you have it. Monkey slippers!

[edit] I forgot to say – I made these using Burda 7978 as a starting point, and then getting creative with a book about making your own shoes. Feel free to make your own!