Warm, Comfy Slippers from Wool Sweaters

The Crafty Adventures of The Naughty Bear

I have always loved crafts and diy projects and always am looking at new projects I want to try. But I never seem to try most of them! So my New Year's resolution is to get off my butt and do it! I have a loooong list of projects, (many, many projects) and I am determined to do at least two of them a month. Which probably will not put a dent in my list. Yeah, it's that long...


My first project is a pair of warm, comfy slippers that I made from an old wool sweater my dad gave me when they moved to Florida (cuz who needs a heavy wool sweater when it never goes below 60 degrees?). I've been looking for a pair of wool slippers, but no way in God's Green Earth am I paying big $$$$$ for slippers. If I spent that much on slippers, the dog would probably use them as a chew toy. This pair I made for my daughter.

These are super easy to do, even for the craftily challenged! I washed my sweater multiple times in hot water and dried it on high until it shrunk and became really dense.  My next step was to find a pattern. 

You could buy a pattern, I suppose, but I wanted to do this cheap. Hey, the sweater was free, so why should I shell out for a pattern? :) I looked online at different patterns and found one that I tweaked to fit my foot. You don't need a pattern for each foot. Just one will do. Cut out your left slipper. and then flip it over to do the right. Not too hard to figure out, right? Cut out 1 top and 2 bottoms for each slipper. Like this.

Next, I used regular thread to sew together the 2 foot pieces. I found a couple tutorials that skipped this step and blanket stitched everything together, but I found that the pieces kept slipping and was getting really irritated that I kept having to realign everything every other *&%*! stitch and using inappropriate language as I was getting quite frustrated. I found that just a quick basting stitch holds everything together nicely and makes the blanket stitch that much easier. 

See? Easy. And it took almost no time at all. Then I stitched the top to the bottom.

The slippers may look done in this pic, but they're not. Unless you're lazy, then  hey, you're done. But as I said before, this is only a quick basted stitch to keep the pieces together while you blanket stitch. These puppies wouldn't hold up too well as is.

Luckily, I had some black yarn in my stash of crafty stuff (which is awesome, cuz I didn't want to shell out some $$$). You just need a darning needle or large eye needle. Then you start to blanket stitch all the way around the outside edge.

I had to check out quite a few tutorials on how to blanket stitch. And I kinda suck at it. So I won't be explaining how to do this. I found a video on YouTube that was helpful. And there are tons of places explaining how to do this. But you may already know how to do this. In that case, good for you.

My daughter loved hers, so I made myself a pair from another sweater. Here they are in all their finished glory. They are very warm and comfy and, best of all, free. I like free. If you don't have any wool sweaters you want to cut up, go to Salvation Army or thrift shops and pick up one cheap. Cheap is almost as good as free. Of course, you can also go out to the mall and buy one. Knock yourself out.

I hope you found this interesting and informative. I hope you'll come back and check my next project. I'm debating between the pom pom rug and the paper rose wreath. Or maybe the t-shirt reusable bag....