{"id":1683,"date":"2019-01-22T07:03:13","date_gmt":"2019-01-22T15:03:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/beansproutadventures.com\/?p=1683"},"modified":"2019-01-26T10:19:12","modified_gmt":"2019-01-26T18:19:12","slug":"felted-slippers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/beansproutadventures.com\/index.php\/2019\/01\/22\/felted-slippers\/","title":{"rendered":"Felted slippers"},"content":{"rendered":"

I continue to be interested in making shoes. It’d be nice to make welted leather shoes (and I hope to eventually, since my everyday shoes are close to being completely worn out), but they require a lot of specialized tools (see the shoe-making Reddit community<\/a> for more info). So I thought I’d start with an easier task: making felt slippers! If they turn out well, I may want to make felt shoes also (like Russian valenki<\/a>, traditional felt boots).<\/p>\n

I followed the directions in this tutorial<\/a>, in addition to watching lots of Youtube videos (Christi Dea<\/a> makes felt slippers and shoes, and does other weird fiber art).<\/p>\n

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Make a bubble wrap template by tracing your foot + allowance for shrinkage, and adding the desired ankle height. Fold the bubble wrap in half so that you get an attached, double template.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Gather all your wool! I used brown and gray Shetland wool that I bought from another spinner on Craigslist. According to the above tutorial, you will need about 500 grams (1+ lb) of wool, loose, roving, or batts are all fine.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Then you layer wool and felt it a little bit, just enough to hold together.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Then you full<\/a>\u00a0(fulling is the origin of the common last names Walker, Tucker, and Fuller!) it to shrink and harden the felt. It takes a loooooong time to do this by hand. I also put my booties through the washer and dryer, but they need to be shrunk further.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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They are very voluminous at the moment. The instructions I followed incorporated a tongue into their shoes, so I was led to add extra space around the ankle. As you can see, this was a mistake. Hopefully I can shrink all the extra down to fit, or design a tie\/button system to take up the excess. I’m aiming for slip-ons or easy-tie shoes.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

To get the slippers to fit my feet well, I’m going to shrink them around a set of lasts I made<\/a> (with much difficulty!) of my feet:<\/p>\n

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They still need to be filled to be made solid.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So this project is very much in progress. I’ll update y’all once I get more done!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I continue to be interested in making shoes. It’d be nice to make welted leather shoes (and I hope to eventually, since my everyday shoes are close to being completely worn out), but they require a lot of specialized tools (see the shoe-making Reddit community for more info). So I thought I’d start with an … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Felted slippers”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beansproutadventures.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1683"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beansproutadventures.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beansproutadventures.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beansproutadventures.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beansproutadventures.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1683"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/beansproutadventures.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1683\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1735,"href":"https:\/\/beansproutadventures.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1683\/revisions\/1735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beansproutadventures.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beansproutadventures.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beansproutadventures.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}