Favorite Slippers: Saved!

These are my favorite slippers, saved from the brink of death today.

The Albertellis made me these slippers years ago. Each of them knit one, then when I visited for the holidays we felted them to my perfect size. They’re thick, wooly, warm and comfy and I loved them. I loved them so much that I wore them all the time, scuffing about the house.

One day, whilst scuffing, I noticed that I’d worn through the first layer of sole at the at the ball of my foot. Oh noes! The slippers were temporarily set aside with the admirable intentions of embarking upon a daring rescue effort. Almost two years later and that effort had yet to appear…until today.

Required tools and supplies:

• Large piece of thick leather, acquired from the East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse
• Tin snips (for cutting the leather)
• Sharpie (for marking the leather)
• Leather punch
• Ruler and sewing gauge
• Large needle
• Industrial-strength nylon thread

Method (repeat for each slipper, duh):

• Place a slipper on the leather and carefully trace the sole onto the leather using the Sharpie. You’ll want to be sure that you’re tracing onto the side of the leather which you do not want to show.
• Cut out the new sole with the tin snips.
• Mark Sharpie dots along the perimeter of the sole, using the sewing gauge and ruler to evenly space them 1/4″ from the edge and 1/4″ apart.
• Grab your leather punch, set it to the smallest hole possible (2mm in my case) and punch out all the Sharpie dots.
• Line up the new sole on the bottom of the slipper and carefully sew it on using the nylon thread. The sole shown here is double-sewn, once clockwise around the sole, once counter-clockwise, each time with a doubled up thread.
• If necessary, trim any extra leather from the sole.

Voila! Daring rescue effort accomplished! And with a new sole tough enough to stand up to years of scuffing.

I wasn’t going to post about this (after all, they’re just slippers and of no importance to anyone but myself) but after looking at how well they turned out I couldn’t help it. So, yes, this post is entirely for me to publicly pat myself on the back and say, “Nice job.” I hardly think I can be blamed. Look at that stitching… I mean, wouldn’t you want to show off just a little bit? Besides, if I can’t post self-indulgent and self-absorbed things like this then why have a blog at all?