Wool sweater slippers

One of the nice things about getting older, I find, is that I appreciate the small joys in life a lot more than I used to. And one of those for me is taking my shoes off when I get home and putting on my slippers. I love slippers.

I've worn to death my old zakka house shoes. They've been fantastic and I'm sad to see them go, but I'm not up to the effort to make a new pair at the moment. I remember that making them was pretty laborious.


So when I found this pattern for wool sweater slippers at the Fiber & Twigs Etsy shop I knew I had to try it. It uses upcycled materials, is quick & easy and cute. And the pattern is a PDF download, forwarded to me a matter of minutes after I bought it! Which meant I could indulge my desire for new slippers that very evening! Woo hoo! (yes it's true, I don't get out much :-)


For my first pair (I'm sure there'll be many more) I used an old grey (thrifted) cardigan that I'd accidentally felted previously by throwing it into a load of washing. As the cardigan had shrunk so much (oops) I couldn't get a whole top pattern piece out of a panel so that's why you see seams in the pic below. Obviously it would be better to use a larger garment to avoid this but it still worked fine.


For the soles I used my old scraps of thrifted leather so that they'd be more durable and I could wear them out into the back yard to the washing line (and maybe for the occasional trip to the corner shop, hee hee).

And then I embroidered an 'l' and 'r' onto them to avoid a frustration I'd had with the zakka house shoes.





I love the cute details that have been put into this pattern: binding around the openings, encased seams inside, cute little finger tags at the back... ah! In fact, I'm wearing them right now... argh! this is getting creepy. Let's just say that I love these slippers :-)


Head on over to My creative space for more obsessive crafting.