Fleece Slippers

One of my favorite gifts to give is slippers.  It gets pretty cold here in the winter and if you wear slippers often at home they wear out quick enough to need a replacement every couple of years at least.

Last year I made a pair of slippers and liked how they turned out (sadly no pics of them to share).  So I decided to make more slippers this year.

The Man's Slipper

I started with my husband's favorite shoes.  I wrapped paper around it to get the general shape I was going for and used the sole as a general shape for the bottom.

 

Then I cut the upper out of blue poly fleece and the soles out of both fleece and vinyl.

I used my fiskars as many people have warned me that the poly fleece will dull my beloved ginghers. 

I gave the toe a couple of pleats to give a bit of a box-toe effect. 

uppers closed at the back

 

stitching upper to sole

I made a pair for my husband first, a wearable-muslin of sorts. So there isn't a vinyl sole on his.

 

So he tried the first one on and it was way too big. It was loose around his ankle and generally didn't fit.  At first I tried to remedy this by adding some elastic to the ankle.

But that didn't really work, so I made some quick alterations to the pattern and made another.

shortening the first trial slipper

attaching a new shorter sole

TA-DA!

yeah... that's a huge improvement

So I went ahead and made up the slippers for the rest of the guys in the same way. (with the addition of the vinyl soles, of course)

My brother wearing his

The Lady's Slipper

I remember finding online and tweaking a slipper pattern last year but I have no idea where it was from.  This slipper is a maryjane style.

I kept the muslin pattern i used last year and started with that. I overlaid the new men's sole on it to get the shape change I wanted.

Also, my sister-in-law has tiny feet so I had to make the pattern smaller at the same time.  Here you can see the difference.

Then I cut it out in green fleece (the same I used for her daughter's coat).

And assembled in similar fashion to the man's slipper.

TA-DA!

 

I've digitized these patterns and am thinking of offering them up for download here on the blog if anyone is interested.

Happy first week of 2012!