How to Make Infant Shoes

Want to make a pair of cute, stylish soft-soled shoes for your child? This article will attempt to explain the process of crafting your own felt shoes.

Things You'll Need

• Template
• Wool felt
• Pins
• Seamstress's chalk (or washable marker)
• Buttons, snaps or Velcro
• Needle and thread
• Rickrack

Instructions

1. 

   Measure your child's feet. This is essential for finding a template in the correct size for your child. After you find a template in the size and style you desire, cut out the individual pieces and pin them to the felt you've chosen, leaving at least 1/2 inch of room between each piece. Using your seamstress's chalk or marker, draw an outline on the felt around your pinned pieces that is at least 1/4 inch larger all around.

2. Cut your felt and remove the patterns and pins. To create your heel seam (this seam will shape the top of your slipper), fold the upper piece in half, and sew along the straight edge.

3. Pin the top of shoe to the sole of the shoe. With a needle and thread, sew the two pieces together. When you finish stitching, trim your excess felt and turn the felt shoe inside out to hide the seams neatly inside. If you use rickrack, this is where you'll need it. Glue it on the outside or inside rim of the upper as a decorative trim. (Decide which looks better to you, a "pinked" edge peeking from inside the shoe, or a rickrack trim on the outside.)

4. Choose your method of fastening the shoe. You can use a button, snap or Velcro. If you go the button route, you need to make a button slit on the strap.

5. From here, use your imagination. Attach a bow or ribbon, jazz up your finished product with cute cut-out felt shapes or stitch your child's name across the top with embroidery floss for a special, one-of-a-kind wool felt slipper for the special child in your life.

Tips & Warnings

• Measure twice and cut once. Although felt is relatively cheap, so often these days our time is not. Save yourself the headaches of finding out you've not allowed yourself enough room for your stitching. Use an old wool sweater that you've outgrown if you don't have a craft store nearby or if the urge strikes you to get creative during the store's off-hours.

Resources

• Southern Stitches: Baby shoe gallery